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  1. Hunter, J.: MetaNet - a metadata term thesaurus to enable semantic interoperability between metadata domains (2001) 0.00
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    Abstract
    Metadata interoperability is a fundamental requirement for access to information within networked knowledge organization systems. The Harmony international digital library project [1] has developed a common underlying data model (the ABC model) to enable the scalable mapping of metadata descriptions across domains and media types. The ABC model [2] provides a set of basic building blocks for metadata modeling and recognizes the importance of 'events' to describe unambiguously metadata for objects with a complex history. To test and evaluate the interoperability capabilities of this model, we applied it to some real multimedia examples and analysed the results of mapping from the ABC model to various different metadata domains using XSLT [3]. This work revealed serious limitations in the ability of XSLT to support flexible dynamic semantic mapping. To overcome this, we developed MetaNet [4], a metadata term thesaurus which provides the additional semantic knowledge that is non-existent within declarative XML-encoded metadata descriptions. This paper describes MetaNet, its RDF Schema [5] representation and a hybrid mapping approach which combines the structural and syntactic mapping capabilities of XSLT with the semantic knowledge of MetaNet, to enable flexible and dynamic mapping among metadata standards.
    Source
    Journal of digital information. 1(2001) no.8, art.# 42
  2. Metadata practices on the cutting edge (2004) 0.00
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    Imprint
    Washington, DC : National Information Standards Organization
  3. Miller, E.: ¬An introduction to the Resource Description Framework (1998) 0.00
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    Abstract
    The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is an infrastructure that enables the encoding, exchange and reuse of structured metadata. RDF is an application of XML that imposes needed structural constraints to provide unambiguous methods of expressing semantics. RDF additionally provides a means for publishing both human-readable and machine-processable vocabularies designed to encourage the reuse and extension of metadata semantics among disparate information communities. The structural constraints RDF imposes to support the consistent encoding and exchange of standardized metadata provides for the interchangeability of separate packages of metadata defined by different resource description communities.
  4. Duval, E.; Hodgins, W.; Sutton, S.; Weibel, S.L.: Metadata principles and practicalities (2002) 0.00
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    Abstract
    For those of us still struggling with basic concepts regarding metadata in this brave new world in which cataloging means much more than MARC, an article like this is welcome indeed. In this 30.000-foot overview of the metadata landscape, broad issues such as modularity, namespaces, extensibility, refinement, and multilingualism are discussed. In addition, "practicalities" like application profiles, syntax and semantics, metadata registries, and automated generation of metadata are explained. Although this piece is not exhaustive of high-level metadata issues, it is nonetheless a useful description of some of the most important issues surrounding metadata creation and use. The rapid changes in the means of information access occasioned by the emergence of the World Wide Web have spawned an upheaval in the means of describing and managing information resources. Metadata is a primary tool in this work, and an important link in the value chain of knowledge economies. Yet there is much confusion about how metadata should be integrated into information systems. How is it to be created or extended? Who will manage it? How can it be used and exchanged? Whence comes its authority? Can different metadata standards be used together in a given environment? These and related questions motivate this paper. The authors hope to make explicit the strong foundations of agreement shared by two prominent metadata Initiatives: the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) and the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Learning Object Metadata (LOM) Working Group. This agreement emerged from a joint metadata taskforce meeting in Ottawa in August, 2001. By elucidating shared principles and practicalities of metadata, we hope to raise the level of understanding among our respective (and shared) constituents, so that all stakeholders can move forward more decisively to address their respective problems. The ideas in this paper are divided into two categories. Principles are those concepts judged to be common to all domains of metadata and which might inform the design of any metadata schema or application. Practicalities are the rules of thumb, constraints, and infrastructure issues that emerge from bringing theory into practice in the form of useful and sustainable systems.
  5. Daniel Jr., R.; Lagoze, C.: Extending the Warwick framework : from metadata containers to active digital objects (1997) 0.00
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    Abstract
    Defining metadata as "data about data" provokes more questions than it answers. What are the forms of the data and metadata? Can we be more specific about the manner in which the metadata is "about" the data? Are data and metadata distinguished only in the context of their relationship? Is the nature of the relationship between the datasets declarative or procedural? Can the metadata itself be described by other data? Over the past several years, we have been engaged in a number of efforts examining the role, format, composition, and architecture of metadata for networked resources. During this time, we have noticed the tendency to be led astray by comfortable, but somewhat inappropriate, models in the non-digital information environment. Rather than pursuing familiar models, there is the need for a new model that fully exploits the unique combination of computation and connectivity that characterizes the digital library. In this paper, we describe an extension of the Warwick Framework that we call Distributed Active Relationships (DARs). DARs provide a powerful model for representing data and metadata in digital library objects. They explicitly express the relationships between networked resources, and even allow those relationships to be dynamically downloadable and executable. The DAR model is based on the following principles, which our examination of the "data about data" definition has led us to regard as axiomatic: * There is no essential distinction between data and metadata. We can only make such a distinction in terms of a particular "about" relationship. As a result, what is metadata in the context of one "about" relationship may be data in another. * There is no single "about" relationship. There are many different and important relationships between data resources. * Resources can be related without regard for their location. The connectivity in networked information architectures makes it possible to have data in one repository describe data in another repository. * The computational power of the networked information environment makes it possible to consider active or dynamic relationships between data sets. This adds considerable power to the "data about data" definition. First, data about another data set may not physically exist, but may be automatically derived. Second, the "about" relationship may be an executable object -- in a sense interpretable metadata. As will be shown, this provides useful mechanisms for handling complex metadata problems such as rights management of digital objects. The remainder of this paper describes the development and consequences of the DAR model. Section 2 reviews the Warwick Framework, which is the basis for the model described in this paper. Section 3 examines the concept of the Warwick Framework Catalog, which provides a mechanism for expressing the relationships between the packages in a Warwick Framework container. With that background established, section 4 generalizes the Warwick Framework by removing the restriction that it only contains "metadata". This allows us to consider digital library objects that are aggregations of (possibly distributed) data sets, with the relationships between the data sets expressed using a Warwick Framework Catalog. Section 5 further extends the model by describing Distributed Active Relationships (DARs). DARs are the explicit relationships that have the potential to be executable, as alluded to earlier. Finally, section 6 describes two possible implementations of these concepts.
  6. Baca, M.; O'Keefe, E.: Sharing standards and expertise in the early 21st century : Moving toward a collaborative, "cross-community" model for metadata creation (2008) 0.00
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    Content
    Beitrag während: World library and information congress: 74th IFLA general conference and council, 10-14 August 2008, Québec, Canada.
  7. Roszkowski, M.; Lukas, C.: ¬A distributed architecture for resource discovery using metadata (1998) 0.00
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    Abstract
    This article describes an approach for linking geographically distributed collections of metadata so that they are searchable as a single collection. We describe the infrastructure, which uses standard Internet protocols such as the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) and the Common Indexing Protocol (CIP), to distribute queries, return results, and exchange index information. We discuss the advantages of using linked collections of authoritative metadata as an alternative to using a keyword indexing search-engine for resource discovery. We examine other architectures that use metadata for resource discovery, such as Dienst/NCSTRL, the AHDS HTTP/Z39.50 Gateway, and the ROADS initiative. Finally, we discuss research issues and future directions of the project. The Internet Scout Project, which is funded by the National Science Foundation and is located in the Computer Sciences Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is charged with assisting the higher education community in resource discovery on the Internet. To that end, the Scout Report and subsequent subject-specific Scout Reports were developed to guide the U.S. higher education community to research-quality resources. The Scout Report Signpost utilizes the content from the Scout Reports as the basis of a metadata collection. Signpost consists of more than 2000 cataloged Internet sites using established standards such as Library of Congress subject headings and abbreviated call letters, and emerging standards such as the Dublin Core (DC). This searchable and browseable collection is free and freely accessible, as are all of the Internet Scout Project's services.
    As well developed as both the Scout Reports and Signpost are, they cannot capture the wealth of high-quality content that is available on the Internet. An obvious next step toward increasing the usefulness of our own collection and its value to our customer base is to partner with other high-quality content providers who have developed similar collections and to develop a single, virtual collection. Project Isaac (working title) is the Internet Scout Project's latest resource discovery effort. Project Isaac involves the development of a research testbed that allows experimentation with protocols and algorithms for creating, maintaining, indexing and searching distributed collections of metadata. Project Isaac's infrastructure uses standard Internet protocols, such as the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) and the Common Indexing Protocol (CIP) to distribute queries, return results, and exchange index or centroid information. The overall goal is to support a single-search interface to geographically distributed and independently maintained metadata collections.
  8. Bearman, D.; Miller, E.; Rust, G.; Trant, J.; Weibel, S.: ¬A common model to support interoperable metadata : progress report on reconciling metadata requirements from the Dublin Core and INDECS/DOI communities (1999) 0.00
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    Abstract
    The Dublin Core metadata community and the INDECS/DOI community of authors, rights holders, and publishers are seeking common ground in the expression of metadata for information resources. Recent meetings at the 6th Dublin Core Workshop in Washington DC sketched out common models for semantics (informed by the requirements articulated in the IFLA Functional Requirements for the Bibliographic Record) and conventions for knowledge representation (based on the Resource Description Framework under development by the W3C). Further development of detailed requirements is planned by both communities in the coming months with the aim of fully representing the metadata needs of each. An open "Schema Harmonization" working group has been established to identify a common framework to support interoperability among these communities. The present document represents a starting point identifying historical developments and common requirements of these perspectives on metadata and charts a path for harmonizing their respective conceptual models. It is hoped that collaboration over the coming year will result in agreed semantic and syntactic conventions that will support a high degree of interoperability among these communities, ideally expressed in a single data model and using common, standard tools.
  9. Neumann, M.; Steinberg, J.; Schaer, P.: Web-ccraping for non-programmers : introducing OXPath for digital library metadata harvesting (2017) 0.00
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    Abstract
    Building up new collections for digital libraries is a demanding task. Available data sets have to be extracted which is usually done with the help of software developers as it involves custom data handlers or conversion scripts. In cases where the desired data is only available on the data provider's website custom web scrapers are needed. This may be the case for small to medium-size publishers, research institutes or funding agencies. As data curation is a typical task that is done by people with a library and information science background, these people are usually proficient with XML technologies but are not full-stack programmers. Therefore we would like to present a web scraping tool that does not demand the digital library curators to program custom web scrapers from scratch. We present the open-source tool OXPath, an extension of XPath, that allows the user to define data to be extracted from websites in a declarative way. By taking one of our own use cases as an example, we guide you in more detail through the process of creating an OXPath wrapper for metadata harvesting. We also point out some practical things to consider when creating a web scraper (with OXPath). On top of that, we also present a syntax highlighting plugin for the popular text editor Atom that we developed to further support OXPath users and to simplify the authoring process.
  10. Heery, R.; Wagner, H.: ¬A metadata registry for the Semantic Web (2002) 0.00
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    Abstract
    * Agencies maintaining directories of data elements in a domain area in accordance with ISO/IEC 11179 (This standard specifies good practice for data element definition as well as the registration process. Example implementations are the National Health Information Knowledgebase hosted by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare and the Environmental Data Registry hosted by the US Environmental Protection Agency.); * The xml.org directory of the Extended Markup Language (XML) document specifications facilitating re-use of Document Type Definition (DTD), hosted by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS); * The MetaForm database of Dublin Core usage and mappings maintained at the State and University Library in Goettingen; * The Semantic Web Agreement Group Dictionary, a database of terms for the Semantic Web that can be referred to by humans and software agents; * LEXML, a multi-lingual and multi-jurisdictional RDF Dictionary for the legal world; * The SCHEMAS registry maintained by the European Commission funded SCHEMAS project, which indexes several metadata element sets as well as a large number of activity reports describing metadata related activities and initiatives. Metadata registries essentially provide an index of terms. Given the distributed nature of the Web, there are a number of ways this can be accomplished. For example, the registry could link to terms and definitions in schemas published by implementers and stored locally by the schema maintainer. Alternatively, the registry might harvest various metadata schemas from their maintainers. Registries provide 'added value' to users by indexing schemas relevant to a particular 'domain' or 'community of use' and by simplifying the navigation of terms by enabling multiple schemas to be accessed from one view. An important benefit of this approach is an increase in the reuse of existing terms, rather than users having to reinvent them. Merging schemas to one view leads to harmonization between applications and helps avoid duplication of effort. Additionally, the establishment of registries to index terms actively being used in local implementations facilitates the metadata standards activity by providing implementation experience transferable to the standards-making process.
  11. Baker, T.; Dekkers, M.: Identifying metadata elements with URIs : The CORES resolution (2003) 0.00
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    Abstract
    On 18 November 2002, at a meeting organised by the CORES Project (Information Society Technologies Programme, European Union), several organisations regarded as maintenance authorities for metadata elements achieved consensus on a resolution to assign Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) to metadata elements as a useful first step towards the development of mapping infrastructures and interoperability services. The signatories of the CORES Resolution agreed to promote this consensus in their communities and beyond and to implement an action plan in the following six months. Six months having passed, the maintainers of GILS, ONIX, MARC 21, CERIF, DOI, IEEE/LOM, and Dublin Core report on their implementations of the resolution and highlight issues of relevance to establishing good-practice conventions for declaring, identifying, and maintaining metadata elements more generally. In June 2003, the resolution was also endorsed by the maintainers of UNIMARC. The "Resolution on Metadata Element Identifiers", or CORES Resolution, is an agreement among the maintenance organisations for several major metadata standards - GILS, ONIX, MARC 21, UNIMARC, CERIF, DOI®, IEEE/LOM, and Dublin Core - to identify their metadata elements using Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs). The Uniform Resource Identifier, defined in the IETF RFC 2396 as "a compact string of characters for identifying an abstract or physical resource", has been promoted for use as a universal form of identification by the World Wide Web Consortium. The CORES Resolution, formulated at a meeting organised by the European project CORES in November 2002, included a commitment to publicise the consensus statement to a wider audience of metadata standards initiatives and to implement key points of the agreement within the following six months - specifically, to define URI assignment mechanisms, assign URIs to elements, and formulate policies for the persistence of those URIs. This article marks the passage of six months by reporting on progress made in implementing this common action plan. After presenting the text of the CORES Resolution and its three "clarifications", the article summarises the position of each signatory organisation towards assigning URIs to its metadata elements, noting any practical or strategic problems that may have emerged. These progress reports were based on input from Thomas Baker, José Borbinha, Eliot Christian, Erik Duval, Keith Jeffery, Rebecca Guenther, and Norman Paskin. The article closes with a few general observations about these first steps towards the clarification of shared conventions for the identification of metadata elements and perhaps, one can hope, towards the ultimate goal of improving interoperability among a diversity of metadata communities.
  12. Baker, T.: Languages for Dublin Core (1998) 0.00
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    Abstract
    Over the past three years, the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative has achieved a broad international consensus on the semantics of a simple element set for describing electronic resources. Since the first workshop in March 1995, which was reported in the very first issue of D-Lib Magazine, Dublin Core has been the topic of perhaps a dozen articles here. Originally intended to be simple and intuitive enough for authors to tag Web pages without special training, Dublin Core is being adapted now for more specialized uses, from government information and legal deposit to museum informatics and electronic commerce. To meet such specialized requirements, Dublin Core can be customized with additional elements or qualifiers. However, these refinements can compromise interoperability across applications. There are tradeoffs between using specific terms that precisely meet local needs versus general terms that are understood more widely. We can better understand this inevitable tension between simplicity and complexity if we recognize that metadata is a form of human language. With Dublin Core, as with a natural language, people are inclined to stretch definitions, make general terms more specific, specific terms more general, misunderstand intended meanings, and coin new terms. One goal of this paper, therefore, will be to examine the experience of some related ways to seek semantic interoperability through simplicity: planned languages, interlingua constructs, and pidgins. The problem of semantic interoperability is compounded when we consider Dublin Core in translation. All of the workshops, documents, mailing lists, user guides, and working group outputs of the Dublin Core Initiative have been in English. But in many countries and for many applications, people need a metadata standard in their own language. In principle, the broad elements of Dublin Core can be defined equally well in Bulgarian or Hindi. Since Dublin Core is a controlled standard, however, any parallel definitions need to be kept in sync as the standard evolves. Another goal of the paper, then, will be to define the conceptual and organizational problem of maintaining a metadata standard in multiple languages. In addition to a name and definition, which are meant for human consumption, each Dublin Core element has a label, or indexing token, meant for harvesting by search engines. For practical reasons, these machine-readable tokens are English-looking strings such as Creator and Subject (just as HTML tags are called HEAD, BODY, or TITLE). These tokens, which are shared by Dublin Cores in every language, ensure that metadata fields created in any particular language are indexed together across repositories. As symbols of underlying universal semantics, these tokens form the basis of semantic interoperability among the multiple Dublin Cores. As long as we limit ourselves to sharing these indexing tokens among exact translations of a simple set of fifteen broad elements, the definitions of which fit easily onto two pages, the problem of Dublin Core in multiple languages is straightforward. But nothing having to do with human language is ever so simple. Just as speakers of various languages must learn the language of Dublin Core in their own tongues, we must find the right words to talk about a metadata language that is expressable in many discipline-specific jargons and natural languages and that inevitably will evolve and change over time.

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