Pete Johnston UKOLN, University of Bath Bath, BA2 7AY

1. An overview of collection-level metadataApplications of MetadataBCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, Ismaili Centre, London, 29 May 2002 Pete Johnston UKOLN, University of Bath Bath, BA2 7AY Email p.johnston@ukoln.ac.uk URL http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ UKOLN is supported by:

2. An overview of collection-level metadata • Context : the information landscape • Collections and collection description • CLD in practice • Conclusions: navigating the landscape BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

3. Context • User • not interested in functional/structural organisation of resource provider • doesn’t want to negotiate multiple interfaces • access across resource provider boundaries • Service providers • construct various user-centred “portals” • surface content from multiple resource providers • Resource providers • deliver content through multiple services • Crossing of boundaries between contexts • Rich, complex information landscape BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

4. What is a collection? • Collection • “an aggregation of physical or digital items” • Aggregates of, e.g. • natural objects: fossils, mineral samples… • created objects: artefacts, documents, records… • digital resources: documents, images, multimedia objects, data, software… • digital surrogates of physical objects: documents, images… • metadata: catalogue records, item descriptions, collection-level descriptions (!)… BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

5. What is a collection? • Various criteria for aggregation, e.g. • By location • By type/form of item • By provenance of item • By source/ownership of item • By nature of item content • …. • Permanent, temporary • Discrete, distributed BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

6. Why collection description? • Enable provider to • manage collections • disclose information about collections • overview of otherwise uncatalogued items • summary where item-level detail inappropriate • Enable user to • discover/locate (physical/digital) collections • select (physical/digital) collections to explore/search on basis of summary description • Enable software agents to • select digital collections to search on behalf of user • perform searches across multiple digital collections BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

7. A Model for Collections • Research Support Libraries Programme • Support for academic researchers • discovery of/access to collections • collaborative management of collections • Primarily physical (library/archive) collections • Michael Heaney, An Analytical Model of Collections and their Catalogues • Based primarily on a library and archival view of ‘collection’... • … but intended to be applicable across wide range of collection types • Functionally concerned with finding, identifying BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

8. A Typology of Collection Description • Unitary • info about collection as whole, not about items • Hierarchic • info about collection as whole, and about items (and relationships between items and whole) • Analytic • info about items in collection • Indexing • info derived from items in collection BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

9. A Schema for Collection Description • CLD is metadata record • RSLP Collection Description Schema • structured set of metadata attributes • simple description of subset of entities in Heaney model • Collection • Location • Agents • Based on Dublin Core where possible • RSLP CD instance can be expressed in RDF • RDF/XML syntax for serialising descriptions BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

10. Content Producer Item Collector Collection Owner Administrator Location Schema vs. model Creator BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

11. A Schema for Collection Description • RSLP CD schema supports creation of “unitary” collection description • Not a substitute for existing richer schemas for CLD • a means of creating simple, high-level descriptions for wide range of collections • Cross-domain • Different ideas of “collections” • Different criteria for defining “collections” • Different ways of describing “collections” • But useful/possible to agree on broadly common view…? BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

12. CLD in practice: Archives • Principle that value of individual record derives from context, relationships • Archival fonds • collection defined by provenance • records of organisation or individual • collection of physical items • made available by a physical service • Archival description • emphasis on “multi-level” resource description • well-established standards for unitary and hierarchical CD • Encoded Archival Description (EAD) SGML/XML DTD BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

13. CLD in practice: Archives • Collection described by an EAD “CLD” • CLD • used in local resource discovery service by repository • submitted to domain-specific service e.g. Archives Hub • mapped/transformed to simple, high-level CLD which might be used in cross-domain service BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

14. CLD in practice : RSLP • Library collections • collections defined by • location • subject of content • source/owner • collections of physical items • made available by a physical service • Library collection-level description • in past, informal, unstructured • use of RSLP CD schema by RSLP projects • CLDs • used in project-specific services • programme-wide service? BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

15. CLD in practice : the JISC Information Environment • Content made available as collections • Physical collections • of physical items (e.g. books) • Digital collections • of digital items (text, image, audio-video, software, datasets etc) • of digital metadata records • describing physical items (e.g. MARC records in OPAC) • describing digital items (e.g. DC records in subject gateway database) • describing physical collections (e.g. EAD CLDs in Archives Hub database) BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

16. Content Web Web Web Web Authorisation Authentication End-user needs to join services together manually - as well as learning multiple user interfaces End-user CLD in practice : the JISC Information Environment Currently…. BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

17. CLD in practice : the JISC Information Environment • Collections of digital metadata records made available by multiple digital services e.g. • via provider Web site (HTML only) • as OAI repository • as Z39.50 target • Portals need to determine • which digital collections are available • what digital services available to access collections • IE service “registry” contains • CLDs for digital collections • descriptions of associated services BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

18. Content Web Web Web Web Authentication Authorisation Broker or Aggregator Collection Description End-user is “automatically” presented with relevant resources through relevant channels Portal Service Desc. Thesauri User Profiles End-user CLD in practice : the JISC Information Environment The vision…. BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

19. CLD in practice : the JISC Information Environment • Portal • can present dynamically-updated view of the JISC “information landscape” • view may be tailored to user preferences • Resource provider • can “surface” resources through multiple services/channels BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

20. Conclusion: navigating the landscape • CLDs as resource discovery metadata • CLDs support “survey of information landscape” • “to identify areas rather than specific features - to identify rainforest rather than to retrieve an analysis of the canopy fauna of the Amazon basin” (Heaney, 2000) • The “navigator” of the landscape may be a human researcher or a software tool BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

21. Acknowledgements • UKOLN is funded by Resource: the Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries, the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the UK higher and further education funding councils, as well as by project funding from the JISC and the European Union. UKOLN also receives support from the University of Bath where it is based. • http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002