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Metadata for the Masses

Paul Miller

Interoperability FocusUK Office for Library & Information Networking (UKOLN)

P.Miller@ukoln.ac.uk http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/

UKOLN is funded by Resource: the Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries, the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the Further and Higher Education Funding Councils, as well as by project funding from JISC and the EU. UKOLN also receives support from the Universities of Bath and Hull where staff are based.

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“No man is an island”Donne, John, 1572–1631

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“No citizen is an island”

Community Information Services (CIS)

A Netful of Jewels

The People’s Network

“Cool Britannia”

e–Government strategy

The National Grid for Learning

The University for Industry/ LearnDirect

National Electronic Library for Health

NOF–Digitise

Interactive Digital TV

100% of Government services available electronically soon

ukonline.gov/ me.gov.

NGDF Metadata Project/ UKSGB

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Standard solutions

The nice thing about standards…

…is that there are so many to choose from!

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So… why use standards?

• Benefit from the expertise of others– Standards are (often!) compiled by groups of very

knowledgeable people… and you can’t afford to employ them all yourself…

• Enforce rigour in internal practices– Standards are means of asserting control over the

resource, allowing you to manage it more effectively

• Facilitate interoperability (and access)– Community Information originates from multiple

sources, and has many potential uses– Considered deployment of standard solutions makes

access to those resources feasible for many.

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What do standards do?

• Help identify what’s important– GILS “Access Points”– Dublin Core elements– Mandatory fields

• Allow for consistent use of terminology– Name Authority Files– Thesauri– Look–up tables

• Enable internal and external data exchange• Reduce duplication of effort• Minimise (hopefully!) wasted effort• Reflect consensus.

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What types of standard are there?

• Terminology– ‘East Riding of Yorkshire’, not ‘North Humberside’– ‘City of York Council’ is preferred to ‘York City Council’

• Format– ‘Miller, A.P. 1971–’, not ‘Paul Miller’

• Discovery/ Semantics/ DBMS– A gross simplification, and a very big bucket– ‘Creator’, ‘Subject’, ‘Title’, ‘Description’…

• Syntax– <RDF xmlns = “http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-rdf-syntax#”>

• Transfer– ftp://ftp.niso.org/… .

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What is ‘Metadata’?

– meaningless jargon

– ora fashionable, and terribly misused, term for what we’ve always done

– or“a means of turning data into information”

– and“data about data”

– andthe name of a public servant (‘Tony Blair’)

– andthe title of legislation (‘the Freedom of Information Act’).

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Metadata Standards

“Paul Miller gave a really interesting talk about Dublin Core at the Motorbike Museum in Birmingham”

• In Birmingham, or in Dublin?

• About Motorbikes and about milling?

• But what was it?

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Metadata Standards

<speaker>“Paul Miller</speaker> gave a <value judgement>really interesting</value judgement> talk about <subject>Dublin Core</subject> at the <location>Motorbike Museum in Birmingham”</location>.

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Challenges

Many flavours of metadatawhich one do I use?

Managing changenew varieties, and evolution of

existing forms

Tension between functionality and simplicity, extensibility and interoperability

Functions, features, and cool stuff Simplicity and interoperability

Opportunities

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Introducing the Dublin Core

• An attempt to improve resource discovery on the Web

– now adopted more broadly

• Building an interdisciplinary consensus about a core element set for resource discovery

– simple and intuitive– cross–disciplinary — not just libraries!!– international– open and consensual– flexible.

See http://purl.org/dc/See http://purl.org/dc/

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• 15 elements of descriptive metadata• All elements optional• All elements repeatable• The whole is extensible

– offers a starting point for semantically richer descriptions

• Interdisciplinary– libraries, government, museums,

archives…

• International– available in more than 20 languages, with

more on the way...

Introducing the Dublin Core

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• Title• Creator• Subject• Description• Publisher• Contributor• Date• Type

• Format• Identifier• Source• Language• Relation• Coverage• Rights

http://purl.org/dc/

Introducing the Dublin Core

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The Dublin Core and Public Sector information

• Global/Government Information Locator Service– Richer set of Access Points, offering enhanced

functionality within a domain– Maps well to Dublin Core

– Next version likely to entirely adopt DC1.1 semantics

• Australian Government Locator Service– Based closely upon Dublin Core

– Adds information on Audience, Availability, Mandate, and Function.

See http://www.naa.gov.au/govserv/agls/See http://www.naa.gov.au/govserv/agls/

See http://www.gils.net/See http://www.gils.net/

See http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/dc-government/See http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/dc-government/

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me.gov“Not me, ‘Gov”

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my.gov

my.schools.gov

my.health.gov

my.environment.gov

my.library.gov

my.trains.gov

my.farming.gov

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The Vision thing

Vision is two–fold:• Citizen–focussed Access to

government for the Citizen– me.gov– NELfH– People’s Network, etc.

• Access to government by government– Information Asset Register– GSI– Joined–up Government.

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The Premise

Government needs to be visible on the Internet• Use of metadata will increase recall from

the major commercial search engines– Not really…

• Use of metadata will increase recall from customised search engines deployed on government Portal sites

– Absolutely

The Citizen doesn’t necessarily care about the structure of Government.

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The Portal mentality

Portals are becoming very common……but what are they?• In HE and FE’s DNER, we distinguish

between Portals and Gateways;– A Portal is ‘deep’, and provides access to the

contents of a set of resources– A Gateway is ‘shallow’, and provides

descriptions of the contents of a set of resources.

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Portals and GovernmentThere need not be only one government

portal:• me/y.gov

– General public face of Government

• me/y.schools.gov– Interface tailored to primary and secondary

education ‘customers’, drawing information from DfEE, DSS (?), Benefits Agency, etc.

• etc.All presenting information drawn from a common

data pool, according to common — or interoperable — standards…

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me.Gov for Paul…?

Good Morning, Paul.

Search Personalise Home Log Out

DCMS Press Releases…

Museums to be free

Millennium Dome closed…

Resource Press Releases…

Name changed again…

Minister welcomes ‘GLAM’You owe Us £2,345.23.Click here for breakdown by department

Remember to Vote

East Riding News…

Hull News…Starbucks comes to Hull

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What we need to make it happen

• Common Vision• CITU Metadata and Interoperability Groups?• The world beyond Government!

• Common Terminology• Thesauri and Controlled Vocabularies

– http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue23/metadata/– cf http://www.seamless.org.uk/

• Common Semantics• Dublin Core? [plus Guidelines]

– http://purl.org/dc/

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• Common Syntax and Structure• XML? RDF? [plus Schemas, etc.]

– http://www.w3.org/XML/ – http://www.w3.org/RDF/

• A means to join it all up• Z39.50 ? [plus Profile and Infrastructure]

– http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue21/z3950/

– http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/interop–focus/activities/

z3950/ int_profile/bath/draft/ .

See http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/interop-focus/See http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/interop-focus/