DigitalKoans

JISC has released Machine Services for Metadata Discovery and Aggregation—metadata+.

Here's an excerpt from the Executive Summary:

The main aim of the project is to develop an interoperability demonstrator to explore the technical aspects of providing a service-oriented infrastructure to facilitate metadata discovery and aggregation. The project developed a test bed that exposes metadata through standard search and linking protocols. Metadata mapping work was undertaken to enable the test bed to provide search response in multiple metadata schemas that are widely used in digital library and e-learning.

The core of the test bed consists of an open source digital repository—Fedora. Off-the-shelf, the repository provides web services for metadata searching and substantial content management and security features particularly suitable for real-life use scenarios. Since the search protocol considered in this project requires additional features that are not available from the repository, modifications to the repository source code were made. The modifications also involve incorporating the metadata mapping requirement such that search responses from different metadata formats can be facilitated.

A basic demonstrator (project website) has been created to exemplify how the search protocol can be used for discovering and aggregating metadata, as well as presenting them in coherent formats relevant to the intended presentation contexts. The metadata sources include publisher and digital libraries providing both bibliographic and user-generated (enrichment) metadata such as reviews and recommendations. In addition, the project demonstrated a novel use of the search protocol to dynamically create e-learning content packages, digital library metadata collection and news feeds.

Several digital libraries initiatives have evaluated the test bed infrastructure for real use scenarios. These libraries are an extended form of the test bed demonstrator and provide relevant facilities such metadata wiki (editor) and annotation services for gauging enrichment metadata (review, rating and recommendation) from users. They will continue the objectives of this project particularly on improving the test bed infrastructure and exploring the aggregated use of enrichment metadata, to enable the academic and research user communities to add values to bibliographic metadata from the publishers and libraries communities.

The Open Archives Initiative Object Reuse and Exchange has released an alpha version of the ORE Specification and User Guide. Comments can be made on the OAI-ORE discussion group or via email to ore@openarchives.org.

Here's an excerpt from the introduction:

The World Wide Web is built upon the notion of atomic units of information called resources that are identified with URIs such as http://www.openarchives.org/ore/0.1/toc (this page). In addition to these atomic units, aggregations of resources are often units of information in their own right. . . .

A mechanism to associate identities with these aggregations and describe them in a machine-readable manner would make them visible to Web agents, both humans and machines. This could be useful for a number of applications and contexts. For example:

• Crawler-based search engines could use such descriptions to index information and provide search results sets at the granularity of the aggregations rather than their individual parts.
• Browsers could leverage them to provide users with navigation aids for the aggregated resources, in the same manner that machine-readable site maps provide navigation clues for crawlers.
• Other automated agents such as preservation systems could use these descriptions as guides to understand a "whole document" and determine the best preservation strategy.
• Systems that mine and analyze networked information for citation analysis/bibliometrics could achieve better accuracy with knowledge of aggregation structure contained in these descriptions.
• These machine-readable descriptions could provide the foundation for advanced scholarly communication systems that allow the flexible reuse and refactoring of rich scholarly artifacts and their components [Value Chains].

The Technical Advisory Service for Images (TASI) has updated the following documents that deal with digital imaging issues:

• Establishing a Digital Preservation Strategy
• How Should You Store Your Digital Data?
• Image Tagging: Embedding Metadata in Image Files
• An Introduction to Digital Preservation
• Using Optical Media for Digital Preservation

The Library of Congress has released a draft of the Report on the Future of Bibliographic Control for comment. Comments should be received by December 15.

Here's an excerpt from the "Introduction":

The recommendations fall into five general areas:

1. Increase the efficiency of bibliographic production for all libraries through increased cooperation and increased sharing of bibliographic records, and by maximizing the use of data produced throughout the entire “supply chain” for information resources.
2. Transfer effort into higher-value activity. In particular, expand the possibilities for knowledge creation by “exposing” rare and unique materials held by libraries that are currently hidden from view and, thus, underused.
3. Position our technology for the future by recognizing that the World Wide Web is both our technology platform and the appropriate platform for the delivery of our standards. Recognize that people are not the only users of the data we produce in the name of bibliographic control, but so too are machine applications that interact with those data in a variety of ways.
4. Position our community for the future by facilitating the incorporation of evaluative and other user-supplied information into our resource descriptions. Work to realize the potential of the FRBR framework for revealing and capitalizing on the various relationships that exist among information resources.
5. Strengthen the library profession through education and the development of metrics that will inform decision-making now and in the future.

RLG Programs has published RLG Programs Descriptive Metadata Practices Survey Results and RLG Programs Descriptive Metadata Practices Survey Results: Data Supplement.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

We conducted this survey in July and August 2007 among 18 RLG partners in the United States and the United Kingdom, selected because they had "multiple metadata creation centers" on campus that included libraries, archives, and museums and had some interaction among them. Our objective was to gain a baseline understanding of current descriptive metadata practices and dependencies, the first project in our program to change metadata creation processes.

The report summarizes the descriptive practices used across a variety of applications, the data structure and data content standards followed, the audiences for the metadata created, and some organization patterns. The data from the 89 respondents is reported in a series of charts and graphs that are open to interpretation. RLG Programs offers its own interpretation in the prefatory narrative, flagging questions for follow up and goals for future projects. Although we saw some expected variations in practice across libraries, archives and museums, we were struck by the high levels of customization and local tool development, the limited extent to which tools and practices are, or can be, shared (both within and across institutions), the lack of confidence institutions have in the effectiveness of their tools, and the disconnect between their interest in creating metadata to serve their primary audiences and the inability to serve that audience within the most commonly used discovery systems (such as Google, Yahoo, etc.).

The University of Tennessee Digital Library Center has released version 1.2 of the DLC-MODS Workbook under a GNU General Public License. A demo is also available.

Here's an excerpt from the diglib announcement:

The DLC-MODS Workbook provides a series of web pages that enable users to easily generate complex, valid MODS metadata records that meet the 1-4 levels of specification outlined in the Digital Library Federation Implementation Guidelines for Shareable MODS Records, (DLF Aquifer Guidelines November 2006).

Developed by programmer Christine Haygood Deane under the direction of metadata librarian Melanie Feltner-Reichert, this open source client-side software provides control of date formats and other problematic fields at the point of creation, while shielding creators from the need to work in XML. Metadata records created can be partially created, saved to the desktop, reloaded and completed at a later date. Final versions can be downloaded or cut-and-pasted into text editors for use elsewhere.

The Library of Congress and Xerox will work together to build a repository of around 1 million JPEG 2000 images of public domain works.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The two organizations are studying the potential of using the JPEG 2000 format in large repositories of digital cultural heritage materials such as those held by the Library and other federal agencies. The eventual outcome may be leaner, faster systems that institutions around the country can use to store their riches and to make their collections widely accessible.

The project, designed to help develop guidelines and best practices for digital content, is especially relevant to the Library’s National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program, which has been working with several other federal agencies on digitization standards.

The trial will include up to 1 million digitized, public domain prints, photographs, maps and other content from the Library’s extraordinary collections. Scientists in the Xerox Innovation Group will work with these materials to create an image repository that they will use to develop and test approaches for the management of large image collections.

The images to be used from the Library’s collection are already digitized (primarily in TIFF format), but JPEG 2000, a newer format for representing and compressing images, could make them easier to store, transfer and display. According to Michael Stelmach, manager of Digital Conversion Services in the Library’s Office of Strategic Initiatives, JPEG 2000 holds promise in the areas of visual presentation, simplified file management and decreased storage costs. It offers rich and flexible support for metadata, which can describe the image and provide information on the provenance, intellectual property and technical data relating to the image itself.

Xerox scientists will develop the parameters for converting TIFF files to JPEG 2000 and will build and test the system, then turn over the specifications and best practices to the Library of Congress. The specific outcome will be development of JPEG 2000 profiles, which describe how to use JPEG 2000 most effectively to represent photographic content as well as content digitized from maps. The Library plans to make the results available on a public Web site.

The Library of Congress, the British Library, Library and Archives Canada, and the National Library of Australia have agreed to coordinate their implementation of RDA: Resource Description and Access.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

These national libraries, together with representatives from professional library associations in Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, are members of the Committee of Principals which oversees the work of the Joint Steering Committee for Development of RDA, which is responsible for developing RDA. . . .

RDA addresses the needs of the future by providing a flexible framework for describing all types of resources of interest to libraries. RDA guidelines will be easy and efficient to use, as well as compatible with internationally established principles, models and standards. In addition, RDA will maintain continuity with the past, as data created using RDA will be compatible with existing records in online library catalogs.

The libraries plan to implement RDA by the end of 2009. To ensure a smooth transition to RDA, the four national libraries will work together where possible on implementation matters such as training, documentation and any national application decisions. Regular updates will be issued by the group to keep the library communities in their countries informed on RDA implementation progress and policy decisions.

The Art Institute of Chicago has developed the Digital Archive for Architecture (DAArch) to support the use of the Categories for the Description of Works of Art (CDWA) metadata schema in DSpace. The software runs under BSD/UNIX/Linux; is written in Java, JSP, PHP; utilizes PostgreSQL, and is under a BSD License.