Presentation to the Resource Discovery Task Force Management Group, summarising thoughts on next steps with the RDTF Metadata Guidelines.

1. RDTF Metadata Guidelinesan update Andy Powell (and Pete Johnston) RDTF Management Framework Project Board 29 March2011

2. Functional requirement help libraries, museums and archives expose existing metadata (and new metadata created using existing practice) in ways that support the development of aggregator services integrate well with the web (and the emerging web of data) note:RDTF is not about re-engineering cataloguing practice in the LAM sectors

3. Guiding principles support the RDTF Vision informed by Paul Miller’s desk study review flow from the JISC IE Technical Review meeting in line with Linked Data principles based on the W3C Linked Open Data Star Scheme in line with Designing URI Sets for the UK Public Sector take into account the Europeana Data Model and ESE be informed by mainstream web practice and search engine behaviour and be broadly in line with the notion of “making better websites” across the library, museum and archives sectors

4. Draft proposal used the W3C Linked Open Data star scheme as framework (at 3, 4 and 5 star levels) three approaches community formats RDF data Linked Data 196 comments – on pretty much all aspects of the draft

5. Guiding principles support the RDTF Vision informed by Paul Miller’s desk study review flow from the JISC IE Technical Review meeting in line with Linked Data principles based on the W3C Linked Open Data Star Scheme in line with Designing URI Sets for the UK Public Sector take into account the Europeana Data Model and ESE be informed by mainstream web practice and search engine behaviour and be broadly in line with the notion of “making better websites” across the library, museum and archives sectors We probably failed in this!!

6. Re-conceptualising the guidelines RDF Not-RDF Individual ItemDescriptions Linked Data “page per thing” Collectionsof Descriptions “RDF Data” “bulk download”

7. The draft guidelines RDF Not-RDF Individual ItemDescriptions Linked Data “page per thing” Collectionsof Descriptions “RDF Data” “bulk download”

8. The Web! RDF Not-RDF Individual ItemDescriptions Linked Data “page per thing” Collectionsof Descriptions “RDF Data” “bulk download”

9. Possible adoption path RDF Not-RDF Individual ItemDescriptions Linked Data “page per thing” Collectionsof Descriptions “RDF Data” “bulk download”

10. Bulk download “give us what you’ve got” serve existing community bulk-formats (e.g. files containing collections of MARC, MODS, BibTeX, DC/XML, SPECTRUM or EAD records) or CSV over RESTfulHTTP use sitemaps and robots.txt and/or RSS/Atom to advertise availability and GZip for compression for CSV, providea column called ‘label’ or ‘title’ so we’ve got something to display give us separate records (for CSV, read ‘rows’) about separate resources (where you can) simples!

11. Page per thing “build better websites” serve an HTML page (i.e. a description) for every “thing” of interest over RESTful HTTP optionally serve alternative format(s) for each description (e.g. a MODS or DC/XML record) at separate URIs and link from the HTML descriptions using “<link rel=“alternative” … /> use “cool” ‘http’ URIs for all descriptions use sitemaps and robots.txt and/or RSS/Atom to advertise availability optionally offer OAI-PMH server to allow harvesting of all descriptions/formats

12. RDF data “RDF bulk download” serve big buckets of RDF (as RDF/XML, N-Tuples or N-Quads) over RESTful HTTP re-use existing conceptual models and vocabularies where you can assign URIs to every “thing” of interest use Semantic Sitemaps and the Vocabulary of Interlinked Datasets (VoID) to advertise availability of the buckets

13. Linked Data “W3C 5 star approach” serve HTML and RDF/RDFa for every “thing” of interest over RESTful HTTP assign‘http’ URIs to every “thing” (and every description of a thing) follow “cool URIs for the semantic web” recommended practice become part of the web of data - link to other people’s stuff using their URIs

14. Recommendations use the four-quadrant model to frame the guidelines (we think all four quadrants are useful, and that there should probably be some guidance on each area) develop specific guidance for serving an HTML page description per 'thing' of interest (possibly with associated, and linked, alternative formats such as DC/XML) develop (or find) specific guidance about how to sensibly assign persistent 'http' URIs to everything of interest (including both things and descriptions of things)

15. Also… that the definition of 'open' needs more work (particularly in the context of whether commercial use is allowed) but that this needs to be sensitive to not stirring up IPR-worries in those domains where they are less of a concern currently that mechanisms for making statements of provenance, licensing and versioning be developed where RDF triples are being made available (possibly in collaboration with Europeana work) that a fuller list of relevant models that might be adopted, the relationships between them, and any vocabularies commonly associated with them be maintained separately from the guidelines themselves

16. Fin