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Metadata Watch Report #1

[ contents | section 1 | section 2 ]

Section 3 - Domain reports

3.1 Industrial sector
3.2 Publishing sector
3.3 Audio-visual sector
3.4 Educational sector
3.5 Academic sector
3.6 Research sector
3.7 Geographical information sector

3.5 Academic sector

The academic domain - as interpreted by this report - is quite diverse in nature. The majority of the metadata-based initiatives described in this report are funded as part of relatively short-term projects. Others are linked to longer-term initiatives (e.g. the Recordkeeping Metadata Standard for Commonwealth Agencies), part of standards development processes (e.g. the Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System) or part of wider discovery-type services (e.g. the Resource Discovery Network).

In the metadata initiatives of the academic domain that have been reviewed here, the main issues relate to topics like: metadata for the Web, Internet information gateways and metadata for recordkeeping and digital preservation. Each one of these different strands raises different issues.

Web metadata developments are, in part, based on the work of standards bodies like the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). For example, since the publication of the HTML 4.0 specification, it has been possible to embed metadata into the headers of Web pages. W3C have also developed the Platform for Internet Content Selection (PICS) that enables labels (metadata) to be associated with Internet content. Most current metadata developments coming from the W3C are centered on the development of the Resource Description Framework (RDF)- which combines other W3C work on PICS, digital signatures (DSig) and Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P).

The first Internet information gateways - often then known as subject gateways or subject-based information gateways - were created in the mid-1990s. Many of these services have been funded as part of short-term projects (e.g. as part of the Electronic Libraries (eLib) Programme) and many continue with this form of business model. Increasingly, however, Internet information gateways are becoming part of more formal collections of services like the UK's Resource Discovery Network (RDN).

Software projects like ROADS were funded to support the development of Internet information gateways. ROADS, for example, developed a software toolkit for such gateways together with documentation and support. Similar work has been carried out by European Commission-funded projects like DESIRE - e.g. by publishing a 'DESIRE Information Gateways handbook' - and Renardus. Co-operation between gateways has also been encouraged, especially through multi-partner projects like DESIRE and Renardus and through the IMesh collaboration. The development of software tools remains important. A project known as IMesh Toolkit is attempting to develop a configurable, reusable and extensible toolkit for subject gateway providers.

Recordkeeping metadata has been an active topic of research for the archives and records management communities since the mid-1990s, when two prominent North American-based projects were concerned with looking at the long-term preservation of electronic records. The first was funded by the US National Historic Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) and was entitled 'Functional Requirements for Evidence in Recordkeeping'. The project was carried out by the School of Information Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh and is usually referred to in the literature as the Pittsburgh Project. The second project was entitled 'The Preservation of the Integrity of Electronic Records' and was undertaken by a team of researchers based in the School of Library, Archival & Information Studies at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Neither project was purely concerned with metadata but the Pittsburgh Project published a metadata specification for evidence based on a model known as the Reference Model for Business Acceptable Communications (BAC). The UBC project created a set of eight templates (i.e. metadata) that were intended to identify the necessary components of records in a variety of recordkeeping environments. The work of the UBC-based project has been carried forward in a wide-ranging international project known as InterPARES.

Despite all of these developments, there has not been widespread implementation of recordkeeping metadata by the archives and records management community. This may be due - in part - to the complexity of the systems that would result from an implementation of something like the Pittsburgh Project's BAC-based scheme. Despite this, the Australian archives and records management communities - in particular - have begun to develop metadata element sets for recordkeeping and associated documentation. For example, the National Archives of Australia have produced a Recordkeeping Metadata Standard for Commonwealth Agencies (May 1999). Also, researchers based at the School of Information Management and Systems at Monash University have produced a metadata element set for recordkeeping as part of the SPIRT Recordkeeping Metadata Project.

A fourth strand of metadata developments in the academic sector relates to the subject generally known as the long-term preservation of digital information (digital preservation). Some of the initiatives relate to the preservation (and other) metadata that needs to be collected as part of digitisation projects. Examples of these would be the collection of metadata elements used by the Making of America II Testbed Project and the sixteen elements defined by a Research Libraries Group (RLG) commissioned Working Group on the Preservation Issues of Metadata (May 1998). Other work is more general - based on the concept of being able to describe any digital object for long-term preservation in association with an identified preservation strategy. The National Library of Australia (NLA) has been very active in this area in its proof-of-concept project called PANDORA (Preserving and Accessing Networked DOcumentary Resources of Australia) and in its draft document 'Preservation metadata for digital collections'. Other - typically library-based - projects like the UK Cedars (CURL Exemplars in Digital Archives) project and the European Commission-funded NEDLIB project have based their metadata schema development upon a model defined in an draft ISO standard known as the Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System (OAIS).

The main trends differ according to which strand is being considered.

The metadata work of the W3C is still mainly centered upon the development of RDF. This standard has not yet been implemented widely, although this is expected to change in the near future.

The main trends that relate to Internet information gateways are the increased international co-operation between gateways as evidenced by broker system for various European gateways that is envisaged by the Renardus project and by wider IMesh activity. Another trend that can be identified - in some contexts at least - is the development of gateways from short-term project funding to unified services like the RDN.

Metadata standards being developed for recordkeeping and for digital preservation have not - as yet - been widely implemented. Those implementations that exist tend to be part of limited-scale pilot projects. In the digital preservation area at least, much future development will be based upon the OAIS model. The RLG and the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) have also recently (March 2000) announced some co-operative work on digital preservation, including the production of a document entitled 'Preservation Metadata for Long-Term Retention'.

The activities described in this report are quite diverse so it is difficult to adequately identify overlaps and gaps. We can see, however, that there are functional similarities between metadata schemas being developed for electronic recordkeeping and for digital preservation. Internet information gateway initiatives also overlap with library-based initiatives like OCLC's Cooperative Online Resource Catalog (CORC). In some sectors (e.g. the RDN), Internet information gateways are increasingly becoming known as Internet resource catalogues.

>>Section 3.6 Research sector

[ contents | section 1 | section 2 ]

Maintained by: UK Office for Library and Information Networking (UKOLN)
Last updated: 07 August 2001