Making working thesauri

ARK-June 2007 [email protected]

Making a taxonomy work for the organisation

Liddy NevileSunrise Research Laboratory/La Trobe University


Making a functional taxonomy

• The role of a taxonomy is not limited to discovery within the realm of the creator of the digital library.

• What is necessary for a good taxonomy to work inside and outside the organisation, for the organisation?


• How interoperable are the organisation’s resources?

• How do outsiders access and contribute to the organisation’s knowledge base?

• Does the individual user get access to what they need to use the resource?

Three interoperability problems


• Opening the silos across the organisation

• Integrating external and internal resources for external and internal use

• Considering the individual so that everyone gets access to the

resources

Three dimensions to the problem


Three case studies

• Victorian government ‘silos’• Quinkan Rock Art• AccessforAll considerations - TILE


Interoperability

• Structure• Syntax• Semantics(system conformance)


1. Working across the silos

• Making Inter-operability Visible– Visualising Interoperability: ARH,

Aggregation, Rationalisation and Harmonisation

– With Michael Currie, Meigan Geileskey, Richard Woodman

• Project of Victorian Department of Premier & Cabinet• http://www.bncf.net/dc2002/program/ft/paper21.pdf

http://www.bncf.net/dc2002/program/ft/paper21.pdf


1. Working across the silos

• 3 government departments all using the same AGLS schema

• Differences in purpose - one makes brochure-ware, one records critical info, one does broad-based research, ….

• All have document m’ment systems• All docs must be discoverable


Process

• Aggregate - – List all elements and values currently

used - is there a significant difference?

Element name Examples of values providedDC.Title Victorian Government home page

Department of JusticeMarriages (level 2 overview)Marriage CertificatesFishtank

DC.TITLE SOFWeb Front PageDC.title Victorian Education Channeltitle Department of Justice - Births Deaths and Marriages

- MarriagesDepartment of Justice - Births Deaths and Marriages- Marriages - Marriage CertificatesDepartment of Education & TrainingVictorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority,AustraliaArts MattersCopyright, Trade Marks And DisclaimersVictorian Education Channel - Welcome Page


Process

• Aggregate• Harmonise

– Look at the list of elements and decide which have material differences

**Remembering that each agency values all its metadata content


Harmonise trivial differences

• Mis-use of available elements, qualifiers etc

• Different expression of the same type of information

• Different granularity• Different element name for the

same information, … -> need to rationalise


• Element names– Inconsistent case eg. DC.Title/TITLE/title

EDNA.Userlevel/UserLevel Non-standard names eg. DC.Keywords

Non-standard qualifiers eg. DC.Description.Abstract Non-standard abbreviations eg. DC.Lang

Fields Standard and non-standard element names

eg. 'description' and DC.Description and Custodian

Rationalise


• Values(Despite DCMES recommendations …)

DC.Identifier: other id numbers without qualifiers.

DC.Date: also used yyyy, yyyy/m/d, yyyy-dd-mm

DC.Format: Non-standard terms eg. VHS (PAL) Incorrect case eg. text/HTML

Rationalise


DC.Language: also used en, en-au, en-AU

Qualifiers embedded in values: DC.Publisher CONTENT="corporateName=State..."

Non-standard proper names DPC for Department of Premier and Cabinet

->Generally inconsistent use of capitalisation and punctuation

Rationalise


Discoveries

• Main problems were to dowith incompatibility of syntax and semantics although both were well described in documentation and looked very simple.


Outcomes

• Minimal interference• Visualisation of

differences/incompatibility• Support for local specification and

global interoperability• Base for a single system to satisfy

many purposes using ARH approach


2. Repatriation of Quinkan Culture

• with Eric Wainwright (Team Leader), Sophie Lissonnet (metadata) and others

• An ARC funded LINK Project• Full report - http://eprints.jcu.edu.au/1135/• Int. J. of Metadata, Semantics and

Ontologies (IJMSO)ISSN Vol 1 No 3. (Online):

1744-263X - ISSN (Print): 1744-2621

http://eprints.jcu.edu.au/1135/


Quinkan Country

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressorare needed to see this picture.

Images from the Laura Booklet published by the Ang-gnarra Corporation



Quinkan Culture

• People were here 36,000 years ago• The community has been ravaged

in the last 200 years and so has the culture

• 60 people remain• 290 km from the nearest city• with 100,000 Rock Art paintings in

excellent condition.


Repatriation of resources

• The problem - seamless import and export of descriptions to offer a single portal

• People moving out of country stay connected and those in country can learn from those out of country

• Multiple voices for multiple audiences


Dublin Core - qualified

• A standard form of description with rule-based extensions– Locally specific - globally interoperable

• Standard mappings from other standards

• Enabling functions on the classifications for better discovery – Annotations– Semantic Web applications


Semantic Web applications


Tommy George inspecting red rock ochre.

"A lot of paintings are made in red."



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Annotation Services

• W3C annotation server (Annotea)• Uses W3C standards and technologies• Uses RDF metadata framework• User accessible• Create, store, edit and delete

annotations

server Annotea


Annotation Servers

text text text text text text text text text texttext text text text texttext text text text text

text text text text texttext text text text texttext text text text texttext text text text text


Annotates

Original Resource

User/Author



text text text text texttext text text text text






text text text text texttext text text text texttext text text text text text text text text text


3. Access For All

• By law in Australia, all public resources to be available to all equally ie do not discriminate against those who cannot access text, or sounds, or visuals.

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.


QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressor


How do we know what he needs?

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressor



Accessibility (M’soft)

• 60% working adults in the US - esp. many who are not self-identifying

• ?% people using alternative devices, eg phones?


Accessibility metadata

• Even if resources are accessibility standards conformant, those that suit an individual user are:– not necessarily accessible to her– not discoverable if they are accessible


Accessibility accommodations

• By lowest common denominator?– W3C WAI standards

• By presumed audience?– Guess work by site developer

• By individual user?– AccessForAll ISO standards


TILE

E-learning environment that enables learner-centric

transformation of learning content and delivery

• Authoring support for transformable content and

Metadata

• Browser

• Learning Object Repository

• Learner Preference System


Accessibility metadata

• Metadata to describe needs and preferences of user

• Metadata to describe accessibility characteristics of resources

• Accessibility service to match resources to needs and preferences


Problems for interoperability

• Syntax• Semantics• Structure


Structural incompatibilitiesuser

achievements aspirations

VCE medicine

opportunities

engineering

UNI TAFE Apprentice

• identity• achievements• aspirations• opportunities• …

Hierarchical vs ‘flat’

Five : Three


Compatible structures


Compatible grammars

Compatible grammars

(http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october00/baker/10baker.html)

http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october00/baker/10baker.html




Standards conformance

• Clearly defined requirements for local specificity, global interoperability

• Clearly stated standards for structure, syntax and semantics (functional abstract model)

• Process-integrated metadata creation and editing

• Organisational conformance evaluation


Thank you.


title

Making working thesauri

Education

Transcript of Making working thesauri