Application Profiles

Slide 1: Diane I. Hillmann Director of Metadata Initiatives Information Institute of Syracuse

Slide 2:  Interoperability is as much a need within institutions as it is among institutions  Libraries in their digital projects have built and largely accepted an approach that creates non- interoperable silos of data  How libraries provide discovery services across these silos is often very clunky and generally unsatisfactory  Much of the metadata for these projects is stored as static objects, unmaintained ALA 2008 Anaheim 6/28/08 2

Slide 3:  Human aspects  Focus for consensus building  Documentation of shared consensus  Communication of data intentions  Machine aspects  Validation of metadata as conforming to an AP  Increasingly specific expectations for metadata content  Improved ability to assess and improve metadata ALA 2008 Anaheim 6/28/08 3

Slide 4:  Librarians tend to think about Application Profiles primarily as a documentation activity  We tend to slide over the parts that might require some rethinking:  Functional requirements (what are we trying to do?)  Domain model (how does our data world fit together?)  Result: Our AP documents what we do, not what we should be doing ALA 2008 Anaheim 6/28/08 4

Slide 5: “The Singapore Framework for Dublin Core Application Profiles is a framework for designing metadata applications for maximum interoperability and for documenting such applications for maximum reusability. The framework defines a set of descriptive components that are necessary or useful for documenting an Application Profile and describes how these documentary standards relate to standard domain models and Semantic Web foundation standards. The framework forms a basis for reviewing Application Profiles for documentary completeness and for conformance with Web-architectural principles.” -- Singapore Framework http:// dublincore.org/documents/singapore-framework/ ALA 2008 Anaheim 6/28/08 5

Slide 6: Singapore Framework ALA 2008 Anaheim 6/28/08 6

Slide 7: Singapore Framework ALA 2008 Anaheim 6/28/08 7

Slide 8: Singapore Framework ALA 2008 Anaheim 6/28/08 8

Slide 9: A DCAP is a specification that represents the metadata requirements for a particular application. To accomplish this * it describes what a community wants to accomplish with its application (Functional Requirements) * it characterizes the types of things described by the metadata and their relationships (Domain Model) * it enumerates the metadata terms to be used and the rules for their use (Description Set Profile and Usage Guidelines) * it defines the machine syntax that will be used to encode the data (Syntax Guidelines and Data Formats) --from forthcoming D IApplication Profile Guidelines CM ALA 2008 Anaheim 6/28/08 9

Slide 10:  From: Scholarly Works Application Profile (SWAP)  Facilitate identification of open access materials  Enable identification of the research funder and project code  A set of functional requirements may include user tasks that must be supported, as in these requirements from the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR):  using the data to find materials that correspond to the user's stated search criteria  using the data retrieved to identify an entity ALA 2008 Anaheim 6/28/08 10

Slide 11:  But even if that isn’t a “problem” exactly, there’s some value to be gained from looking at models  FRBR is a model we’ve become familiar with, but it’s not the only one relevant to what we do  We should consider how models allow us to make explicit what we’re describing and how it relates to other parts of the information landscape ALA 2008 Anaheim 6/28/08 11

Slide 12:  SWAP (formerly ePrints AP) uses a modified FRBR Model  Their chosen domain is article level scholarly publishing  Note that they include funding for the activity and affiliation of the creator as important aspects of their model ALA 2008 Anaheim 6/28/08 12

Slide 13: Scholarly Works Application Profile Model ALA 2008 Anaheim 6/28/08 13

Slide 14:  Built on the model derived from that described in Michael Heaney's An Analytical M of Collections and odel their Catalogues and U and I sers nformation R esources: An Extension of the Analytical M of Collections and their odel Catalogues into U sage and T ransactions. It is both a subset and a simplification of that model.  Includes in its requirements the description of indexes and catalogs themselves (based primarily on the usefulness of these to access collections not primarily web-based) ALA 2008 Anaheim 6/28/08 14

Slide 15: Collections AP Model ALA 2008 Anaheim 6/28/08 15

Slide 16:  An AP can provide a basis for automated assessment of metadata quality  Can enable determination of conformance to an AP  Can provide increasingly specific specifications for metadata content  Can improve our ability to assess and “smarten up” metadata in general ALA 2008 Anaheim 6/28/08 16

Slide 17:  If an AP is a “template for expectation,” then:  Completeness should be able to be assessed by machine based on obligations in that AP  Ex.: An AP may require Title, Author and Description, and if Description is missing the metadata can be characterized as “incomplete,” e.g., does not meet expectations  Occurrence of values can be determined  If only one occurrence is expected, and three are provided, the metadata is non-conforming ALA 2008 Anaheim 6/28/08 17

Slide 18:  Presence or absence of mandatory properties  Absence of recommended values  Use of text strings as a value for instead of a URI  Presence of properties not valid in the particular AP  Completeness of records in terms of supplying sufficient information for a user to access a resource  Example of this is where identifiers do not lead to content, are broken, or lack context ALA 2008 Anaheim 6/28/08 18

Slide 19:  If data is specified in an AP as associated with a vocabulary, a machine can determine  Whether the controlled vocabulary is appropriately used in association with a particular property  Whether an allowed string is formatted properly (for example a date)  Whether the string is a valid member of a particular set of allowed strings (a controlled list)  Whether a URI represents a valid term in a controlled set (URI might represent an outdated or deprecated term) ALA 2008 Anaheim 6/28/08 19

Slide 20:  Once expectations and gaps are clear, specific services can be applied:  Terminology services to match text strings with URIs  Improved normalization of data  Machine-based services to provide missing data  Ex.: formats for digital resources; summaries for full text; topics ALA 2008 Anaheim 6/28/08 20

Slide 21:  Documentation is ALWAYS a good activity, but sometimes we fail to look beyond documentation of current practice towards what we should be doing  Application Profiles can operate at the project, institutional or community/domain level—we should explore all these  Development of RDA and its vocabularies provide a great opportunity to look closer at the benefits of an increased level of machine processing ALA 2008 Anaheim 6/28/08 21

Slide 22:  DCMI will publish Guidelines for Application Profiles more oriented to the needs of librarians and others not able to take good advantage of more technical documentation  Publication should be available on the DCMI website this summer or early fall (at the latest)  Look for announcements and consider how the document can be improved or expanded ALA 2008 Anaheim 6/28/08 22

Slide 23: Questions? Email metadata.maven@gmail.com ALA 2008 Anaheim 6/28/08 23