1. DC8 Ottawa, October 4-6, 2000 Rachel Heery UKOLN, University of Bath r.heery@ukoln.ac.uk http://www.ukoln.ac.uk Application Profiles: managing metadata schemas

2. DC8 Ottawa, October 4-6, 2000 What implementors are doing …. Formulating schema identifying existing schemas where useful Adding variety of local extensions to standard schemas for specific requirements adding local elements refining definitions Establishing local good practice formulating rules for content

3. DC8 Ottawa, October 4-6, 2000 Examples of emerging schemas DC-education http://purl.org/dc/document/wd/education-20000430.htm describing educational resources Jon Mason (EdNA) and Stuart Sutton (GEM) users, duration, learning processes, standards, quality RSLP collection description http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/rslp/schema/ describing newly digitised special collections catalogues Andy Powell (UKOLN) collection policy, responsibility, location

4. DC8 Ottawa, October 4-6, 2000 DC-Education proposed schema Various DC elements and recommended qualifiers DC-education extensions – audience mediator –standard identifier, version IEEE LOM IMS elements –TypicalLearningTime, InteractivityType, InteractivityLevel

5. DC8 Ottawa, October 4-6, 2000 RSLP Collection Description schema dc:title The name of the collection dc: identifier A formal identifier for the collection dc:description A description of the collection cld:strength An indication (free text or formalised) of the strength(s) of the collection cld:accessControl A statement of any access restrictions placed on the collection including allowed users, charges etc ……. …...

6. DC8 Ottawa, October 4-6, 2000 Implementors requirements How can implementors be helped to find out about local usage Discovering information about schemas in use. How can implementors combine element sets from different namespaces Establishing context for Dublin Core. Answers will inform DC collaboration with other metadata initiatives

7. DC8 Ottawa, October 4-6, 2000 Good metadata management requirements Inter-working systems Disclosure of semantics Alignment of metadata Disclosure What schemas exist? Is this schema current? How is it used? Economies of scale Re-use of effort -

8. DC8 Ottawa, October 4-6, 2000 Application profiles

9. DC8 Ottawa, October 4-6, 2000 Types of metadata schema Namespace schemas International standards Locally defined schemas, domain specific schemas Application profiles Combinations, subsets, variants of namespace schema

10. DC8 Ottawa, October 4-6, 2000 What is an application profile? Schema consisting of data elements drawn from one or more namespaces optimised for a particular local application –Draws on existing namespaces –Introduces no new data elements –Can specify permitted schemes and values –Can refine definitions

11. DC8 Ottawa, October 4-6, 2000 DC-Education proposed schema Various DC elements and recommended qualifiers DC-education extensions – audience mediator –standard identifier, version IEEE LOM IMS elements –TypicalLearningTime, InteractivityType, InteractivityLevel

12. DC8 Ottawa, October 4-6, 2000 RSLP Collection Description schema dc:title The name of the collection dc: identifier A formal identifier for the collection dc:description A description of the collection cld:strength An indication (free text or formalised) of the strength(s) of the collection cld:accessControl A statement of any access restrictions placed on the collection including allowed users, charges etc ……. …...

13. DC8 Ottawa, October 4-6, 2000 Syntax issues: how to capture expression of application profile? Within metadata instance? HTML XML/RDF XML Within schema definition? XML Schemas RDF Schemas Characteristics to be expressed? Rules for content Alternative definitions Subsets Mixing elements from different sets …and avoid complexity

14. DC8 Ottawa, October 4-6, 2000 Issues Conformance what is a valid IEEE LOM record? Avoiding overlap and ambiguity What is the distinction between schemas, namespace and vocabularies

15. DC8 Ottawa, October 4-6, 2000 Influence of syntax RDF can be very expressive in its assertions within an instance of metadata.. Ensure expressions of application profiles can be made independent of RDF How much expression must go into the schema language, how much into the metadata record?

16. DC8 Ottawa, October 4-6, 2000 Deal with classes Metadata can be complex Can describe different classes Collection Descriptions deal with people, items, locations Does this mean separate schemas per class? Or more richly structured schema? Same solution for schemas and application profiles!

17. DC8 Ottawa, October 4-6, 2000 Where do we go from here?

18. DC8 Ottawa, October 4-6, 2000 Publishing application profiles Why? To inform and promote To provide authoritative version To facilitate inter-working To align with other schemas How? Facilitate schema registration Metadata registries

19. DC8 Ottawa, October 4-6, 2000 Metadata registry activity DC Registry working group Schemas Workshop, Bonn, November 23-24 http://www.schemas-forum.org/

20. DC8 Ottawa, October 4-6, 2000 Change of emphasis …..not new functionality

21. DC8 Ottawa, October 4-6, 2000 References DESIRE registry http://desire.ukoln.ac.uk/registry/ Dublin Core Registry discussion list http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/dc-registry/ IEEE Learning Object Metadata Scheme http://ltsc.ieee.org/doc/wg12/scheme.html BIBLINKCore http://hosted.ukoln.ac.uk/biblink/wp8/fs/bc-semantics.html RDF Schema Specificaion http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/CR-rdf-schema-20000327/ SCHEMAS http://www.schemas-forum.org/ Namespaces in XML http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml-names