AGLS Metadata Standard David Bromage National Archives of Australia Copyright Commonwealth of Australia 2008

Overview Background and objectives Implementation and evolution Extensions of AGLS 2007-2008 Review The future 2

Information Management Steering Committee, Aug 1997 Background The Management of Government Information as a National Strategic Resource Information Management Steering Committee, Aug 1997 Recommendation 6. In order to achieve increased visibility of government information holdings, approve in principle the establishment of an Australian Government Information Locator System (AusGILS) and request the Australian Archives to develop and implementation plan. 3

Objectives To assist in making government information more visible and accessible to users in an Internet environment To identify publicly releasable information resources at all levels of government, in all media, wherever located To describe information resources to assist discovery and retrieval To serve as a tool to assist record and archival processes 4

Objectives (1997) “To improve the visibility and accessibility of government information and services through the standardisation of Web-based descriptions” 5

Development Decision to base AusGILS on Dublin Core due to simplicity (Oct 1997) Named Australian Government Locator Service (AGLS) 6

AGLS 1.0 (1998) Contributor Publisher Coverage Relation Creator Rights Date Source Description Subject Format Title Identifier Type Language Function Availability 7

AGLS 1.1 (1999) Contributor Publisher Coverage Relation Creator Rights Date Source Description Subject Format Title Identifier Type Language Function Availability Audience Mandate 8

AGLS 1.2 (2000) AGLS qualifiers of DC elements DC.Coverage.jurisdiction DC.Coverage.postcode DC.Relation.isBasisFor DC.Relation.isBasedOn DC.Type.category DC.Type.aggregationLevel DC.Type.documentType DC.Type.serviceType 9

AGLS 1.2 AGLS qualifiers of AGLS elements AGLS.Mandate.act AGLS.Mandate.case AGLS.Mandate.regulation 10

Encoding schemes Controlled syntax GOLD for DC.Creator, DC.Contributor, DC.Publisher AglsAgent for DC.Creator, DC.Contributor, DC.Publisher AglsAvail for AGLS.Availability Controlled vocabularies AglsJuri for DC.Coverage.jurisdiction agls-audience for AGLS.Audience agls-document for DC.Type.documentType agls-service for DC.Type.serviceType 11

Thesauri Australian Governments’ Interactive Functions Thesaurus Whole of government thesaurus of business functions Used for AGLS.Function and recordkeeping Thesaurus of Australian Government Subjects Whole of government subject thesaurus, ANSI/NISO Z39.19 Used for DC.Subject and recordkeeping 12

Implementation Guidance from Australian Government Implementation Manual: AGLS Metadata Agencies determine own policies and procedures Lack of metadata generation tools Early implementation by hand Improved over time 13

Compliance NAA compliance checking 2000-2002 Implemented on 160 agency sites Self-assessment checklist from 2002 AGLS logo no longer a signal of compliance 14

Recordkeeping Metadata Recordkeeping extensions to AGLS Common core with AGLS Some exact mapping and synergies with AGLS Different levels of description AGLS RkMSCA SPIRT 15

AGLS 1.3 (2002) Used to describe non-government resources AGLS Working Group subcommittee of SA IT-021 Progress AGLS towards Australian Standard Renamed AGLS Metadata Element Set Issued as Australian Standard AS 5044-2002 16

AS 5044-2002 Mandatory Creator, Date, Title (Type) Conditional Subject/Function Identifier/Availability Publisher (Audience, Coverage, Language) 17

Extensions of AGLS New Zealand Government Locator Service Education Network Australia HealthInsite Victoria Online National Data Network Australian Broadcasting Corporation AusDIN Portal Project 18

Objective (2007) “To improve the visibility, availability and interoperability of information and services through the provision of standardised resource descriptions which enable users to locate the information or service that they require” 19

AS 5044-2008 Review commenced October 2007 Incorporating DC changes since 2002 Revised property descriptions DCAM terminology AGLS elements and qualifiers to ‘aglsterms’ RFC 2119 key word definitions Removed provisional XML examples/encodings New encoding guidelines Renamed AGLS Metadata Standard 20

AS 5044-2008 Additional DC terms in application profile accessRights conformsTo dateCopyrighted rightsHolder license 21

AS 5044-2008 New AGLS properties accessibility dateLicensed protectiveMarking Expanded audience vocabulary Expanded document type vocabulary Common vocabulary with AGRkMS 22

AS 5044-2008 AGLS.Audience deprecated DC.Coverage.postcode deprecated Migrate to spatial New Postcode encoding scheme 23

AS 5044-2008 New vocabulary encoding schemes ASGC for spatial and jurisdiction <dcterms:spatial> <dcx:valueString dcx:vocabEncSchemeQName="aglsterms:ASGC">17310; Tamworth Regional</dcx:valueString> </dcterms:spatial> ANZSIC for audience ANZSCO for audience <meta name="DCTERMS.audience" scheme="AGLSTERMS.ANZSIC" content="0142; Beef Cattle Farming" /> <meta name="DCTERMS.audience" scheme="AGLSTERMS.ANZSCO" content="121312; Beef Cattle Farmer; 841511; Beef Cattle Farm Worker" /> 24

Revised obligations Mandatory creator, date, title (description, type) Conditional availability, identifier, publisher (accessibility, protectiveMarking) Recommended description, function/subject, language, type 25

Implementation challenges Legacy implementations in HTML 4.01 and DC.Dot form Most not using namespaces (scheme="IMT") Metadata quality (GIGO) “Why bother when Google doesn’t use it?” 26

Implementation challenges New implementations demanding XML guidelines New implementations demanding extensions Greater interoperability with other metadata standards Resource description metadata Use Archive Business process Recordkeeping metadata Preservation metadata Creates resources Archive 27

The future Ongoing dialogue with vendors Enterprise architecture functional specifications Evolution of encoding schemes – XML/SKOS Improved AGLS-XML guidelines, consistent with DC-XML AGLS-RDF guidelines Support site for practitioners (www.agls.gov.au) Convergence/interoperability with AGRkMS RK Document Form  AGLS Document Remain consistent with DC 28