The Dynamics of Sharing: An Introduction to Shareable Metadata and Interoperability

Slide 1: The Dynamics of Sharing Introduction to Shareable Metadata and Interoperability Sarah L. Shreeves University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign August 31, 2007 The Dynamics in the Aggregate: Shareable Metadata and Next-Generation Access Systems SAA 2007 – Chicago, Il

Slide 2: Assumptions

Slide 3: Why Share? • Sharing benefits users – One-stop searching (maybe) – Ability to create customized searches of specific domains – Brings together distributed collections – Ability for USERS to create their own mash- ups of metadata from different sources • Sharing benefits us – Increases exposure of collections – Broadens user base – Potentially adds collaboration opportunities

Slide 4: Why Share? Fundamentally we can no longer assume that users will come through the front door, so sharing metadata gets us “in the flow”.

Slide 5: Keys to Shareability or Interoperability • Communication protocol (Z39.50, OAI PMH, RSS, etc.) • Organizational commitment • Standards • Standards • And more Standards

Slide 6: Sharing metadata: Federated search The distributed databases are searched directly. <title>My resource</ title> Mill? <date>04 <title>My resource</ title> <date>04 <title>My resource</ title> <date>04 For Example: Z39.50, SRU

Slide 7: Sharing metadata: Metadata aggregation The user searches a pre-aggregated database or brings together metadata from diverse sources. Mill? <title>My resource</ title> <date>04 For Example: Search engines, union catalogs, OAI PMH, RSS, Atom

Slide 8: OAI List Records Request

Slide 9: Metadata challenge “the ability to perform a search over diverse sets of metadata records and obtain meaningful results.” – Priscilla Caplan Metadata Fundamentals for All Librarians

Slide 10: Example Title: China Association Author/Creator: China Association Publisher: School of Oriental and African Studies Year: 2002-04-23 Resource Type: text Resource Format: text/html Description: Papers, 1889-1969, of the China Association, including minutes and committee papers of the General Committee and Executive Committee; correspondence with the Foreign Office, Board of Trade, Sino-British Trade Council, Tientsin and Hong Kong Chambers of Commerce, Hong Kong Association and the British Consulate in Shanghai; annual reports (1889-1962); and separate items including the minutes and papers of the China Association's School of Practical Chinese Endowment Fund (1908-1955). Also includes committee papers and minutes of the British Chambers of Commerce in Hankow and Tientsin, the Hong Kong Association, the Sino-British Trade Council, and the British Residents' Association in Shanghai. Also includes photographs of banquets (1896-1906), and albums of newspaper cuttings on China (1940-1947) and Japan (1942-1949). Subject: Asian languages; Chinese; Foreign relations; International relations; International trade; Language instruction; Newspaper press; Photographs; Press; Press cuttings; Second language instruction; South and Southeast Asian languages; Trade; Trade policy; Visual materials URL: http://www.archives.uk/cats/19/65.htm Rights: Unrestricted. Copyright held by the China Association: Swire House, 59 Buckingham Gate, London SW1E 6AJ.

Slide 12: Dublin Core record harvested via OAI Examples title: (Woman Holding a Pie) LNG42122.5 subject: Berkeley; male; outdoors; yard; stair subject: Dorothea Lange Collection subject: The War Years (1942-1944) subject: Office of War Information (OWI) subject: Woman Holding a Pie publisher: Museum of [state] date: 1944 type: image identifier: http://www.orgname.org/idnumber relation: http://orgname.org/findaid/idnumber relation: id:/13030/tf9779p783 relation: http://www.orgname.org/ relation: http://findaid.org.org/findaid/... relation: http://www.orgname.edu/project/

Slide 14: Metadata as a View • Metadata is not monolithic • Metadata should be a view projected from a single information object. • Create multiple views appropriate for different venues • Affects: – Granularity of Description – Choice of vocabularies – Choice of formats

Slide 15: What is Shareable Metadata? • Is quality metadata • Promotes search interoperability • Is human understandable outside of its local context • Is useful outside of its local context • Preferably is machine processable

Slide 16: Shareable Metadata also… • Provides enough contextual information • Is consistent across a collection • Is coherent • Is true to its content but also its audience • Conforms to standards

Slide 17: Safe Assumptions • Users often discover material through shared records, not through your front door • Users don’t know about your collection or won’t remember it. • Shared records lead users to local environment where full context is available • Because users enter through “deep” links, they may bypass introductory information that provides the larger context for a collection.

Slide 18: Contact Information Sarah Shreeves Coordinator, IDEALS University of Illinois Library at Urbana-Champaign Email: sshreeve@uiuc.edu Phone: 217-244-3877 Attributions: Slide 1 image: ALA Techsource (http://flickr.com/photos/alatechsourceblog/) under a CC Attribution-ShareAlike license Slide 2 image: Merrick Brown (http://flickr.com/photos/merrickb/) under a CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license Slide 4 image: Bill Liao (http://flickr.com/photos/liao/archives/date-posted/2007/01/13/) under a CC Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike license This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.