Metadata Lessons Learned

Katy Ginger (ginger@ucar.edu)

Digital Learning SciencesUniversity Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR)

1. Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE)

• Earth science focused

• Educationally oriented (K-12 slant)

• Asked to address datasets

2. National Science Digital Library (NSDL)

• Science, Engineering, Technology, Math and Medical (STEM) focused

• Educational focus via 10 Pathways (higher ed slant)

Two Metadata Stories

1. DLESE: (came online 1999/2000)• Lesson plans, activities, labs, articles, projects

• Visualizations and some datasets

• Datasets that have an educational wrapper

• Reviews, teaching tips, news & events (separate objects from above 3)

2. NSDL: (came online 2002)• Same as above; but reviews, teaching tips, news &

events are not separate objects as in DLESE

*Only metadata that links to external resources is held

Actual Objects

1. DLESE:

• PIs of NSF funded projects,

• K-12 educator groups

• Government organizations: NASA, USGS, NOAA, NAS

• Informal educators from museums

• University faculty

2. NSDL:

• Same as above and including

• Publishers (often but not limited to textbooks)

Types of Contributors

DLESE

• IMS because of education focus & geospatial info

• Required 10 fields but no data typing enforced

• Community developed vocabularies for required metadata - subject, resource type, tech requirements & grade range

• Collections can use a variety of methods to send metadata

• Metadata creation and format changing support

NSDL

• Qualified Dublin Core & IEEE fields

• All fields optional

• Dublin Core controlled vocabs

• Require collections to use OAI to send metadata

• No support to collection builders to create metadata or change formats

Initial Metadata Context

DLESE

• IMS changes versions

• Promised support for geospatial does not happen

• Community demands geospatial focus first

• Community changes to an education focus

• DLESE funding emphasizes quality (resources & metadata)

• An annotation and review project is a primary player

NSDL

• Scientific Pathways become content stewards (only some contribute)

• All fields still optional; encourage presence of title, description, grade range

• Pathways disappointed cannot easily exchange metadata and understand meaning

• Pathways feel their high-quality materials & metadata are lost in NSDL

Change Happens

DLESE

• ADN: education, geospatial, temporal & space info

• Strong data-typing enforced by XML schemas

• Required 10 fields

• Vocabularies for optional metadata – educational standards, teaching method

• Developed other metadata frameworks to support new objects like annotations, tips & news

NSDL

• Uses qualified Dublin Core & IEEE

• All fields optional

• Dublin Core controlled vocabs

• Some NSDL specific vocabs

• Developing community controlled vocabularies at request of the Pathways – grade range, resource type, educational standards, audience

Current Metadata Context

• Metadata Frameworks

• Vocabularies

• Metadata Creation

• Storage Structures

• Catalog Tools

• Contributing

Lesson Learned: Overview

DLESE

• Using multiple metadata frameworks

– Creates overhead

– Allows flexibility

– DLESE meets community demands quicker

– Supports DLESE resource centric searching

– Creates higher quality metadata when different objects are recognized

NSDL

• No required metadata results in very little metadata

• Using a standard metadata framework creates overhead in keeping up and deciding on backwards compatibility

• Does it truly create interoperability? Not necessarily (e.g. Pathways find sharing difficult)

Lesson Learned: Frameworks 1

• Be clear to community in terms of version support

• Are multiple metadata formats allowed or only one for a particular object? (DLESE and NSDL both use a single format only for learning objects)

• Use a standard or own metadata framework?

– DLESE experience: Own framework worked very well but it was purposely made to be encompassing so that it could be mapped to multiple other metadata formats

– NSDL experience: Important to say using Dublin Core but most metadata fields incomplete even for own browsing

Lesson Learned: Frameworks 2

• Bottom line: use metadata that can be mapped to multiple formats without much loss of data

• Because more organizations/people (than you can think of) will ask to share metadata with you or request your metadata for their project

• Know the copyright & terms of use of the metadata shared and ingested

Lesson Learned: Frameworks 3

• Definitions, definitions, definitions: to provide meaning

• Extremely useful in creating browse capabilities

• Useful in knowing what’s in the library (e.g. subject)

• Gives novice catalogers a better chance at cataloging

• Encourages some consistency by its use

• Decide how terms are managed and aged off

• Decide if a vocabulary registry will be used (terms become URI then)

• Decide if vocabularies will be enforced

Lesson Learned: Vocabularies

Lesson Learned: Metadata Creation• Nature of community requires

– Tool support for metadata creation

– Metadata and collection building training for novices

• Support legacy/existing metadata formats semantically and technically:

– Help map vocabularies

– Help change metadata formats programmatically

• Most useful DLESE and NSDL metadata (rank order): title, description, resource type, grade range

• Metadata is just one piece of information for an object (it just tends to be a bit more structured)

• Choose flexible storage structures (e.g. digital libraries use Fedora and Lucene indexes) for metadata, content indexing, content storage and user supplied notes/annotations

Lesson Learned: Storage Structures

• Make flexible – DLESE Collection System (DCS) generates user interfaces and vocabs directly from XML schemas

• Provide cataloging support

– Define the each metadata field

– Provide Best Practices for cataloging each field

• Have built-in metadata sharing capabilities (OAI, API, web services)

Lesson Learned: Catalog Tools

• Allow contributors to provide metadata via multiple methods (OAI, APIs, web services and many more)

• Contributors are more inclined to contribute content rather than metadata

• If willing to contribute metadata, often not aware of metadata format to be contributed or metadata best practices

• Don’t understand the relationship between metadata and its ability to support uniform or targeted discovery

Lesson Learned: Contributing

• DLESE Metadata: http://www.dlese.org/Metadata

• Using Annotation to Add Value to a Digital Library for Education (DLib: Vol. 12, Num. 5 http://www.dlib.org/dlib/may06/arko/05arko.html)

• The NSDL Repository: Using Fedora: http://ndr.comm.nsdl.org/doc/api.pdf

• OAI Software: jOAI http://www.dlese.org/dds/services/joai_software.jsp

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