1. PREMIS Tools and Services
Rebecca Guenther
Network Development & MARC Standards Office,
Library of Congress
NDIIPP Partners Meeting
July 21, 2010

2. Outline of presentation
PREMIS in METS Toolbox (PiM)
Authorities and vocabularies web service (id.loc.gov)
NDIIPP Partners Meeting
July 21, 2010

3. NDIIPP Partners Meeting
PREMIS in METS toolbox
Developed by Florida Center for Library Automation under contract with LC
A set of open-source tools to support the implementation of PREMIS especially in the METS container format
3 components: validate, convert, describe
Source code being made available:
NDIIPP Partners Meeting
July 21, 2010

4. Describe: uses the DAITSS description service
<premis> <ext> </premis>
/a/real/file
droid/jhove

5. Convert: between PREMIS and PREMIS in METS OR PREMIS in METS to PREMIS
<mets> <premis> </mets>
<premis/>
xslt

6. Validate: PREMIS in METS document
confirmation or errors
<mets> <premis/> </mets>
Schematron

7. Demo: http://pim.fcla.edu/
Audio file:
PDF file: describe demo.pdf
Image:
NDIIPP Partners Meeting
July 21, 2010

8. Authorities and vocabularies web service
id.loc.gov
Makes LC owned and maintained authorities vocabularies available as Linked Data
Allows both human-oriented and programmatic access to LC-promulgated authorities and vocabularies.
First offering was LCSH; later additional vocabularies added
Search and download available
NDIIPP Partners Meeting
July 21, 2010

9. Why establish controlled vocabularies?
Control values that occur in metadata
Reduce ambiguity
Control synonyms
Document and publish for reuse
Test and validate terms
Establish formal relationships among terms (where appropriate)
Includes enumerated values in schemas, formal thesauri, code lists, etc.
Many metadata schemes allow for content from other sources. Some data elements may be more useful if a controlled vocabulary is used. Some are published formally, others are developed and used locally.
Formal controlled vocabularies may be used for testing and validation of terms– this is often done in integrated library systems, where bibliographic records may validate against authority records. This is one instance of testing and validation of terms. There is work being done on establishing metadata registries for both documentation and machine validation of both controlled vocabularies and metadata elements/terms. This could be particularly useful for controlled vocabularies, since their usefulness depends on consistency.
NDIIPP Partners Meeting
July 21, 2010

10. Standards maintained at LC that contain controlled vocabularies
LCSH/NAF
Thesaurus of Graphic Materials
MARC Code lists: GACs, countries, languages
ISO and ISO (language codes)
Other MARC controlled lists
Enumerated lists in XML schemas
MODS enumerated values
METS enumerated values
MIX (Technical metadata for digital still images)
PREMIS controlled vocabularies
Others…
NDIIPP Partners Meeting
July 21, 2010

11. Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS)
RDF application used to express knowledge organization systems such as thesauri, taxonomies and the concepts within.
SKOS has a defined element set which is particularly relevant for controlled vocabularies
Relationships between concepts in a concept scheme can be expressed (e.g. broader, narrower) and between concepts in different schemes
Having a dereferencable URI for concepts and their concept schemes enhances the ability to provide web services for consumers of these standards
Maintained by W3C Semantic Web Deployment Group
NDIIPP Partners Meeting
July 21, 2010

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“Linked Data”
A feature of the “Semantic Web” where links are made between resources
Goes beyond hypertext links (i.e. between web pages) but between any kind of object or concept
From Wikipedia: "a term used to describe a method of exposing, sharing, and connecting data via dereferenceable URIs on the Web”
Users can use links to find similar resources and aggregate results
Interaction between data relies on URIs
NDIIPP Partners Meeting
July 21, 2010

13. Reasons for developing a web service for vocabularies
Facilitate development and maintenance process for vocabularies
Make controlled lists openly available
Provide comprehensive information about controlled terms
Experiment with semantic web technologies and linked data
Expose vocabularies to wider communities
NDIIPP Partners Meeting
July 21, 2010

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URIs in id.loc.gov
Interaction with any given individual term and vocabulary is with its URI
Some examples of URIs:
Known-label searches: use when you know the label but not the identifier
Link goes to RDFa It!
Visualizations, “Folk music”
Real hook of site is content negotiation
NDIIPP Partners Meeting
July 21, 2010

15. Technical infrastructure
Django (Python)
LCSH
MySQL
SKOS RDF generated at time of request
Operates, more or less, as traditional relational DB
MARC mapped to relational DB tables
Everything else
RDFlib (Python library, uses MySQL as triplestore)
Runs on triples
XML to SKOS RDF/XML before ingest
XSL, Xquery used
NDIIPP Partners Meeting
July 21, 2010

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Next steps
MADS OWL Schema to enable identification of facets e.g. Aeronautics--Soviet Union—History
Enhance existing vocabularies to show relationships
Broader/narrower relator terms
Matches to other vocabulary terms (e.g. MARC vs. ISO 3166 country codes)
Add new vocabularies
PREMIS controlled vocabularies
MARC country, geographic area, languages
ISO and 639-5
Name authorities
Enhance PiM to validate PREMIS vocabulary terms
NDIIPP Partners Meeting
July 21, 2010