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Introduction to Metadata



Vivian Lee Ward, National Health Museum

Diane Hillman, Cornell University

Judy Ridgway, ENC / The Ohio State University

Marcia Zeng, Kent State University

John Marquis, University of Southern California


Links

List of controlled vocabularies


List of Current Operational and Proposed Metadata Standards


Recorder: Judy Spicer, ENC/The Ohio State University


The following questions will be answered: What is metadata and why is it valuable? How do the various standards (Dublin Core, IEEE LOM, SCORM, and DOI for example) relate to one another? What metadata standard will best describe your collection? What are the challenges and hurdles to avoid and overcome? What is the relationship between metadata and searching your collection? What is the relationship between metadata and your catalog record display? What is OAI and what are the minimal metadata elements that make your collection harvestable in a meaningful way by NSDL.org?


Notes - Introduction to Metadata

Questions and answers for Introduction to Metadata

  • 1 Q There were two schemas talked about--IEEE LOM and Dublin Core (DC). What are the differences? Is there any way to describe the differences between these two schemas that may lead a project to decide which one to use?

Diane Hillmann (DH): The two organizations have agreements. The basics of DC are expressed in IEEE LOM. DC is simpler, somewhat flatter in its abstract model which is where the main distinction lies. Difference is specialization. IEEE LOM is really talking about learning object while DC is more generalizeable. LOM offers much for learning object metadata. Dublin Core is lingua franca. To learn more see the Introduction to Metadata by Pricilla Caplan.

  • 2 Q When will enhancements to harvesting be available?

DH--Soon after meeting, within a month.

  • 3 Q Vocabularies feedback. Is there any kind of a master feedback thats going to come to people so that we can start to work with something thats more common?

Judy Ridgway (JR): The vocabularies (you refer to) were for the metadata repository not a taxonomy. The vocabularies that you sent me had to do with evaluations to assess the metadata repository, not to recommend a taxonomy to anybody.

Questioner: It may be time to stop being so abstract with metadata(missed rest)

DH: We often do not know what taxonomies are being used. DC has the ability to explain what taxonomy or vocabulary youre using so that other people can know whats going on. DC is working on a registration that will help with identification of specific taxonomy. So if youre using some other taxonomy, you need to tell us what it is.

  • 4 Q: Since NSDL is using Dublin Core, can you state a simple compelling reason why one would want to use LOM.

DH: If it is important to have information at that level to describe your objectsuse it. Decisions are up to creator. We can help you figure out how to give it to us so that we can spread it to other people.

Why Did ENC choose LOM over DC?

JR: It has specific aspects that we use such as the educational description , information about the learner, that doesnt fit in DC.

DH: Yes, so you would want to use it if you had an overriding pedagogical reason Consider your objects--LOM is very complicated and hard to find out info.

  • 5 Q I wonder about strategies when the learning objects are dynamically assembled.

DH: Difficult question. I know thats one of the issues that the IEEE LOM committee is trying to address, so you should get involved with them.

  • 6 Q We have a picture and an overlay. We dont want user to only get the meaningless overlay. Is there anyway NSDL can take the Requires field and use that?

DH: Well pass on the information, including the required fields, but we cant provide any functionality based on that. Part of the project planning process maybe to only expose certain resources now and some you will expose later. You still want to share data with us, just maybe not all of it yet.

  • 7 Q If somebody could just paint a picture. On the metadata primer on the site there are examples of a record, what does the final record look like?

DH: Thats what OAI does. It will be a DC record in an OAI wrapper.

  • 8 Q The thing that I am most afraid of is taxonomy issue. There is good advice and direction on the DC. For the new projects, would you (recommend a taxonomy), is there a sort of priorities that youd suggest we look at taxonomies in? Where to start?

DH: You have to figure out your taxonomy. The key is not that you use the same taxonomy as anybody else but that you explain what taxonomy you are using. Eventually, this thing will scale up enough and there will be services that make connections within those taxonomies based on a semantic understanding of what they are.

  • 9 Q Do you prefer that we not invent taxonomies?

Diane: If you want to, and its a big business, then do it properly. Look into how you need to do it so that others can reuse it. Make sure youre going to expose it and maintain it so that others can use it. You can expose several vocabularies. So I would encourage you if youre doing something very specific then you expose several vocabularies. First thing is to pick a taxonomy. Expose the taxonomy you are using. We will make semantic connections. Key is exposing and maintaining use. Inventing a taxonomy is a big business. You will hate yourself in the morning if do not think it through.

Marcia Zeng (MZ): We just had the DC conference where we talked about such things. Any metadata schema has controlled vocabulary and Best Practice guides with suggestions about what vocabulary to use. We see that right now most people just extract the terms they need (from an existing taxonomy) and tell her (Diane) what you are using. (Explained Greens Fields thesaurus use.) If you use IEEE LOM then theres a taxon field that lets you specify the general subject, although its different from the subject field. Create a thesaurus for a project IEEE LOM has taxon field that is very general that is different from the subject fieldDC has same

Diane: The key is not that you use the same taxonomy as anybody else but that you explain what taxonomy you are using. Eventually, this thing will scale up enough and there will be services that make connections within those taxonomies based on a semantic understanding of what they are. First thing is to pick a taxonomy and tell everybody what youre using.

  • 10 Q Were working with a project from NASA about drawing annotations from images. When you foresee implementation of annotations?

DH: I dont have an answer to that, its one of the things we know we must implement but we dont have a timetable for it. It is very much on the table.

  • 11 Q Video collection metadata?

DH: There are a number of metadata schemas for video work with mpeg technical and granularity issues. There is application profiles where you can use parts of one scheme and another not either or.

JR: Isnt Carnegie Mellon using a schema for digital video? (nobodys sure what theyre using)

DH: There is actually something called application profiles where you can use parts of one schema and parts of another; theres not a lot of guidance about how to do that, but you should look into some of that work as well.

MZ: There are special media examples related to metadata markup languages so you can index into the frames.

Recorded 10/14/03
Judy Spicer and Faith Anne Myers
ENC


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NSDL thanks DLESE for hosting the swikis for the NSDL Annual Meeting 2003.

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