1. Metadata practice and direction: a community perspective
Lorcan Dempsey
VP Research and Chief Strategist
NISO Workshop: Metadata Practices on the Cutting Edge. Washington, May
Welcome.
My name is Jay Jordan and I am President and CEO of OCLC.
I am joined today by Cathy De Rosa, Vice President of Corporate Marketing for OCLC.
We are pleased to be able to discuss with you today a report that we recently completed for the OCLC Membership – The 2002 OCLC Environmental Scan – Pattern Recognition.

2. Overview
Metadata
Practice
Community
Directions

3. Metadata

4. Metadata?
Schematized …
… statements about …
… resources

5. Metadata supports operations on resources ….
Know what resources are available
Know how to play a resource
Know provenance of a resource
Know what use policy governs a resource
Know how to ingest a resource
Know how to interact with a resource
Know how to compose/decompose resources …
… and relieves the user of having to have advance knowledge of the characteristics or existence of the resource.

6. Metadata?
… allows people and machines to work smarter …

7. In network space metadata will be associated with everything that moves
Multiple types of information Objects
Collections
Services
People
Organizations
Places
Terms
Formats
Rights
… and will support multiple operations
An example: a library portal 

8. A ‘portal’ example I need a few references Common services
Content services
Application services
Presentation services

9. authentication Common services Content services Application services
Presentation services

10. Directory: user profile
Common services
Content services
Application services
Presentation services

11. Query broker Common services Content services Application services
Presentation services

12. Directory: service description
Common services
Content services
Application services
Presentation services

13. Content: results list Common services Content services
Application services
Presentation services

14. I’d like to get this book.
Common services
I’d like to get this book.
Request broker
Content services
Application services
Presentation services

15. Directory: ILL policy Common services Content services
Application services
Presentation services

16. Directory: service description
Common services
Content services
Application services
Presentation services

17. Content: circ/ILL system
Common services
Content: circ/ILL system
Content services
Application services
Presentation services

18. I need this article too. Request broker Common services
Content services
Application services
Presentation services

19. openURL resolver Common services Content services Application services
Presentation services

20. Directory: local knowledge base
Common services
Directory: local knowledge base
Content services
Application services
Presentation services

21. Nearly there … Directory: service description Common services
Content services
Application services
Presentation services

22. Content: article Common services Content services Application services
Presentation services

23. Metadata for multiple entities required to support operations.
Directory: service description
Directory: user profile
Directory: ILL policy
Authentication
Common services
Directory: local knowledge base
Reference db
OpenURL resolver
Circ/ILL system
Article db
Metadata for multiple entities required to support operations.
This picture could be extended in multiple ways.
Request broker
Query broker
Content services
Application services
Presentation services

24. Community

25. Community? * * * * EAD, MARC AMC, .. MARC, MODS, DC, RSLP, .. Onix, …
XML, RDF, OWL, …
CSDGM, DDI, NBII, IVOA, …
EGMS, AGLS, GILS, …
GEM, DC-ED, IEEE-LOM, SCORM, …
MPEG, JPEG, … * * *

26. Community politics Ontology recapitulates ideology Different
World views
Requirements
Traditions
Legacies
Experience
‘Techeology’
Technology as ideology
Communities coming together in new shared space
Boundary confusion
Mergers and acquisitions
Political and commercial skin at risk
Ontology recapitulates ideology

27. Practice

28. Simple descriptive metadata!!
Application profile
Cataloging rules Controlled vocabs. …
FRBR INDECS CIDOC …
‘Element set’
Values/content
Information model
MARC21 DC
VRA Core MODS Onix …
Encoding
RDF
XML
ISO2709 …

29. Interoperability a factor at all these levels .. For example ..
Encoding
Element set
Content/values
Encoding
Element set
Content/values

30. The interoperable core and communities of practice?
DC-Ed
MODS
MARC 21
SCORM
MARC
XML
LOM
Dublin
Core
Dublin
Core
GEM
ONIX
Godby, Smith and Childress

31. Different classes of metadata increasingly a part of complex object models
Descriptive
Structural
Technical
Administrative
Rights
Preservation
Tracking
Provenance
SCORM
METS
MPEG 21 …

32. Directions

33. Makers and takers in a time of rapid development
Looking over the horizon
A clean slate
At the center of their world
A moving target
Religious differences
Takers
Focus on here and now
Manage legacy environments
Multiple systems and services and priorities
Want stability
Secular pragmatism

34. Interoperability is an economic and service issue
Extract maximum value from investment in
Data (metadata and content)
Services
By ensuring that they are
Sharable
Reusable
Recombinable
Remember:
Element set
Encoding
Value spaces

35. Cost Fragmentation of community agreements and standards activities?
Pressures:
Manage in a world of resource abundance
Demonstrate value
Issues
Programmatically promote metadata from resources where possible
Assess where intellectual contribution justified
Increasingly complex relationships between resources
Bringing together metadata from different policy regimes
Fragmentation of community agreements and standards activities?

36. Statements So what about the Semantic Web then? Trust Inference
Annotation, review, commentary
So what about the
Semantic Web then?

37. Metadata Schematized statements about resources
Historically independent communities of interest overlapping in a network space
Practitioners faced with high acronymic density, many choices, and often a moving target
Kaleidoscopic perspective .. May fall into pattern at any minute …

38. Over to you …
Thank you!
Lorcan Dempsey

39. The pattern is new … The knowledge imposes a pattern and falsifies
For the pattern is new in every moment
Photograph of East Coker by Michael Day.