Metadata Madness Mixing and Matching Metadata in a LOM-Based Repository Sarah Currier (with a huge thank you to Phil Barker and Mikael Nilsson) Moderator, DCMI Education Community Product Manager, Intrallect Ltd Soapbox, Repository Fringe, 31 July 2008, Edinburgh, UK

Once upon a time … there was a little repository being born … … it only knew about e-learning, and e-learning was just a baby too … … but e-learning had learning objects, and used content packaging and learning object metadata … … there were no librarianly midwives around … … so it thought all it needed to be a repository was learning objects and metadata and the e-learning standards that were only half-grown themselves …

Luckily … … the e-learning repository’s creators were a bit wise (it wisnae me) … … and they made sure their underlying metadata model would be as flexible and extensible as possible, and not just be hardwired to the IMS Learning Resource Meta-Data specification … … this was lucky because the IMS LRM was going to change slightly when it was standardised into IEEE LOM, and … … there were many, many other metadata standards and specifications growing up out in the world, each with their own model …

Nowadays we all know … “A typical collection of learning materials is likely to include a wide range of resource types (e.g. images, web pages, digital media, assessment items) all of which require description. In addition there are other factors related to activities such as rights management, ensuring accessibility and preservation that may need to be considered when describing resources. Expert and advisory groups for most object types or activity domains have developed their own specialized metadata and have their own perception of the minimum effort required for best practice.” – Phil Barker, JISC Learning Materials AP Study:

And, as Phil guessed, nowadays … … the baby repository has grown up and discovered that its users want to use it for all kinds of things: Yes, still learning objects (in content packages or not) Assets for creating learning objects, e.g. images and imagebanks; book chapters and journal articles; web links Managing collections of digitised copyright materials Collecting and disseminating research outputs Exposing resources made available via Creative Commons and other open licences Knowing whether courses have previously used a resource with a given cohort … and on it goes, new requirements all the time …

And, nowadays (#2) … … the grown-up repository now has to interoperate with a number of other systems:* Other repositories (sharing metadata and resources with each other, with a variety of vocabularies) Content packaging tools (each with their own take on the IMS and IEEE metadata schemas) Content authoring tools (also with their own take on metadata) Copyright Licensing Authority requirements Portals, aggregation services, SRU/SRW search tools Feed readers * We always thought we would, but now we really have to, and we have to do it in a resource-efficient way: interoperability at last

So many metadata requirements, so little time … … to date, Intrallect has had to implement: IEEE LOM and the IMS LRM it is based on Simple Dublin Core Qualified Dublin Core (to date just Bibliographic Citation fields) XCRI Course Description metadata Z39.87 Technical Image metadata ODRL rights metadata User star rating and tagging fields … for storage and sharing and import and export and exposure for SRU and SRW searches (from portals and VLEs and website) and RSS feeds and podcasts and OAI harvesting and bulk content migration and remote deposit … and there are new customer requirements coming on-stream all the time

So many metadata requirements, so little time … NB: To our users, within intraLibrary this all looks like extensions of the IEEE LOM In our database each new chunk of metadata has its own model; however, there are often semantic problems to solve We try to follow standard XML expressions of the standards where they exist, otherwise we have to create them We often have to create our own context set for SRU/SRW We haven’t had to interoperate with any non-intraLibrary repositories’ implementations of non-LOM standards yet: but interoperating between intraLibrary instances can take work if folk use different vocabularies.

Metadata madness #1 … well, we thought we were going mad, but luckily Mikael Nilsson wrote this fabulous paper: Harmonization of Metadata Standards “While each specification in itself is designed to increase system interoperability, we are increasingly seeing systems that need to work with more than one of these specifications. Adding support for an additional specification generally presents a significant amount of added complexity in implementation. The reason for this is a lack of harmonization between specifications. In an ideal world, adding support for an additional metadata specification would be a simple matter of slightly extending the existing system.”

Metadata madness #2 … Mikael’s paper didn’t actually solve anything, but it helped validate: it’s not us who are mad, it’s the metadata … Harmonization of Metadata Standards … possible solutions: Only use one metadata standard and stick to it (extending where necessary). Develop a proprietary metadata schema. Create mappings: “There are many examples of "mappings" between specifications that provide partial solutions to the problem, but generally fail due to low-fidelity translations and lack of generality (i.e. the mapping only works for limited parts of specifications).” Create a top level data model which: “[…] encompasses the common aspects of all the specifications. This has proven to be feasible in relatively well-constrained domains such as resource aggregation […] In the field of general metadata, where there is no such common ground, such an approach is substantially less likely to be successful.”

Metadata madness #3 Harmonization of Metadata Standards … ways forward (recommendations): Mikael identifies 3 broad categories of blocks to harmonization: Conventions: “methods for identifying and describing metadata elements and terms from value vocabularies” Models: “defin[ing] metadata records, and […] how metadata is structured and processed” Combinations: “ Combining elements to form application profiles, and encoding them in syntaxes” “The above three categories also represent milestones on a roadmap to harmonization - harmonize conventions, then models, then application profiles and syntaxes.”

Metadata madness #4 Harmonization of Metadata Standards current initiatives Intrallect are taking part in: Dublin Core Education Community - including DCMI/IEEE LTSC Taskforce looking at harmonizing LOM and DC; DC-Education Application Profile LOM Next - where to next for the IEEE LOM standard JISC Learning Materials Application Profile study - recommendations for UK FE/HE repositories collecting learning materials ISO Metadata for Learning Resources - yes, another standard. But work is going on to ensure potential harmonisation is maximised

Get involved! Please join the DC-Ed Community!: Or follow up on any of these initiatives, which are all described in this Ariadne article (by me): Metadata for Learning Resources: An Update on Standards Activity for me: Join the DC-Ed list to be notified of new developments and take part in discussions: Thanks to Phil Barker and Lorna Campbell at JISC-CETIS, the DC-Education Community, and Mikael Nilsson and the PROLEARN project for their contributions so far, including to these slides.