1. A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk The MEG Metadata Schemas Registry Pete Johnston, Research Officer (Interoperability), UKOLN, University of Bath p.johnston@ukoln.ac.uk UKOLN Staff Seminar Bath, 25 June, 2003

2. A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk The MEG Registry Metadata schemas registries MEG & the MEG registry The MEG registry data model

3. A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk Metadata Schemas Registries What is a metadata schemas registry? –Application that provides access to information on metadata vocabularies, their components, and related resources What is a metadata schemas registry for? –Disclosure/discovery/selection –Navigation of relationships –For various purposes…. "publication", convergence, tool support…. For human readers & software agents

4. A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk Metadata for Education Group (MEG) Facilitated by Interoperability Focus Forum for discussing provision of educational resources at all levels across UK Encourage consistency of approaches to description Use of DESIRE registry, 2000-2002 Disclosure, implementation/localisation, "convergence"

5. A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk MEG Registry Project Funded by JISC/BECTa, 2002 Re-engineering of DESIRE registry as RDF application Shaped by work in SCHEMAS project Some refinement of data model Uses RDFS, but not (currently) OWL Developed by Dave Beckett (server – Perl, Redland), Damian Steer (client – Java, Jena)

6. A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk MEG Schemas Registry Reads machine-readable descriptions of metadata vocabularies –descriptions stored in Schemas (RDF/XML) –publication API (HTTP POST) also admin interface (HTTP GET) Indexes those descriptions Provides browse/search interfaces for –human readers (HTML) –software tools query API (HTTP GET) http://meg.ukoln.ac.uk/

7. MEG Client Vocabulary managers MEG Registry (Server) Database Other Applications (including other Registries) Information seekers Web browser RDF/XML HTML browse interface Upload API (HTTP POST) Query API (HTTP GET) RDF/XML (Schemas) RDF/XML (Schemas)

8. A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk The registry data model A simplification of complexity Based on –Dublin Core "Grammatical Principles" Elements Element Refinements Encoding Schemes –"Application Profile" May "use" elements from multiple element sets May specify obligation/cardinality May specify encoding schemes May narrow "standard" element semantics

9. Agency Element Set App Profile Encoding Scheme Element Usage Value 1m 1 m 1 m mm 1m m m 1 m 1 m 1 m m 1

10. reg:uses http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/title A name given to the resource rdfs:comment rdf:Property rdf:type reg:isElementOf reg:ElementUsage rdf:type http://.../qualifieddc/title reg:uses reg:isUsageIn http://.../rslpcoll/title reg:ElementUsage rdf:type The name of the collection rdfs:comment reg:uses reg:isUsageIn

11. 1. Registry browse menu http://meg.ukoln.ac.uk/

12. 2. Display Element Set

13. 3. Display Element

14. 4. Display Element Usage

15. 1. Create Application Profile description Add AP description to Schema Add AP details

16. 2. Create Element Usage description Search registry for “title” Elements Drag Element To Profile

17. 3. Create Element Usage description Add Element Usage description to Schema Add Element Usage details

18. 4. Save Schema as RDF/XML File -- Save As

19. Confirm 5. Submit Schema to Server Click to submit Finish

20. A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk Some issues Is the registry data model generally useful? –Or too simple? Too DC-oriented? –Need Schemas in data model Review registry vocabulary –DCMI schema updates –RDF datatyping –OWL - Rich metadata about properties API is simple To what extent can registry support non- RDF applications? (IEEE LOM in XML)

21. A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk Acknowledgements UKOLN is funded by Resource: the Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries, the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the UK higher and further education funding councils, as well as by project funding from the JISC and the European Union. UKOLN also receives support from the University of Bath where it is based. http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/

22. A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk The MEG Metadata Schemas Registry Pete Johnston, Research Officer (Interoperability), UKOLN UKOLN Staff Seminar Bath, 25 June, 2003