Harmony project - JISC Synthesis meeting 2001

Harmony and Synthesis Dan Brickley, ILRT. University of Bristol [email_address]

Harmony project overview
Who?
Dan Brickley, Libby Miller (ILRT)
Carl Lagoze (Cornell)
Jane Hunter (DSTC)
What we’re trying to do:
simple vs complex multimedia metadata; ABC;
Progress: milestones and successes
Challenges and lessons learned

Project Partners
Instititute for Learning and Research Technology (ILRT), University of Bristol
Cornell University, USA (NSF funded)
DSTC (self-funding partner)
common background: metadata, digital images, Dublin Core, XML, RDF, extensibility architectures

Harmony: original goals
Extend Dublin Core for multimedia
Model ‘problematic’ cases
versioning (document workflow)
alternate manifestations (formats, conversions)
content of composite media objects
cross domain: education + media + medicine
Propose cheap common approach

What have we been doing?
“ The Harmony collaboration has led to a metadata representational model (aka ontology, vocabulary, schema) and XML/RDF query implementation (query language and database search system) that supports resource discovery applications over multi-media, multi-vocabulary metadata descriptions.”(!)

In a nutshell... Metadata headaches, 1995-1999: “ works / manifestations; objects, their depictions and creators; agents, actions, change and versioning...” (everyone knew metadata could get complicated)

We implemented it...

ABC at a glance

Query syntax SELECT ?event, ?type, ?time, ?place FROM http://ilrt.org/discovery/harmony/oai.rdf WHERE (web::type ?event abc::Event) (abc::context ?event ?context) (dc::type ?event ?type) (abc::time ?context ?time) (abc::place ?context ?place) USING web FOR http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns# abc FOR http://ilrt.org/discovery/harmony/abc-0.1# dc for http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/

Implementation:
Ongoing development of ABC (NSF and DELOS funded workshops)
Testbed collaboration with CIMI
Prototype query language (‘Squish’)
Software: query engine and database
Implementation feeds into ABC model
collaboration focus on metadata model

Implementation(2)
Acronyms: XML, RDF, W3C, DARPA/DAML, MPEG, CIMI, RSS, OAI, DELOS (dig-lib and beyond...)
Testbed data: CIMI (museums, images...), OAI archives, RSS feeds
Schema language convergence (XML/RDF Schema, DAML)
opensource’d software: Java, Perl

Example RDF/XML Queries
“ Find resources whose dc:format is audio/mp3 , whose dc:rights is http://opencontent.org/opl.shtml and which were the output of an abc:CreationEvent involving an agent who works for the department whose home page is http://www.cs.cornell.edu ”

Was that a ‘multimedia’ query?
Multi-media content focusses our attention on mixing content from diverse contexts
multi-media content requires combination of descriptive techniques
multi-media data isn’t a world apart
avoid mm-specific technology if we can

Recap: solving which problem?
Q: What has this got to do with multimedia ? (“scope creep”?)
A: The scope creep problem!
ABC and Harmony are a response to the ‘metadata wars’ (DC/Education/INDECS/multimedia)
...and the too many committees problem

ABC in context (1999-2000)
The Metadata wars
domain overlaps
Warwick Framework (myth...)
“ Extensibility”, “qualifiers...”
Multimedia (*) metadata

Harmonisation using ABC
Define some ‘abstract, basic concepts’
A common representational style
Supports vocabulary mixing
XML/RDF encoding for exchange
Focus on events, agents, relationships
MPEG-7 RDF encoding by DSTC
“ putting the multi in multimedia”

Current Activity
Ontology Harmonisation w/shop findings
Preparing a 2nd DELOS w/shop
OAI and RDF/RSS interoperability
Refining the model: representing events and states (accurate versioning audit trail)
Track model with implementations

Project Management issues
initial (too) tightly-coupled project plan
Staffing (p/t PI as uk project manager)
UK/US/Australia: timezones, travel
identifying common ground (ABC)
Evaluation: difficult for metadata formats (usage measures? Encourage adoption)
dissemination (groundwork in place)

Lessons for DNER
Metadata modularity is hard
Technology in this area immature
Standards: expensive to invest in; expensive to ignore
Semantic Web and DNER: wider computing industry landscape important
The scope problem may have technical as well as social/political aspects

Lessons(2)...
Data formats not protocols; schemas not RPCs
OAI and RSS 1.0, the two largest initiatives in this tradition, both developed with Harmony involvement, are maturing fast. Cheap technology.
Tech complexity relates to staffing issues (file formats vs protocols)

Questions...

data merging / namespace mixing

Harmony project - JISC Synthesis meeting 2001

by Dan Brickley

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