Metadata for Heterogeneous Digital Assets Fellow: Yong-Mi Kim Faculty Mentors: Judy Ahronheim and Lynn Johnson

Presentation Overview Background DAMS Assets Metadata DAMS metadata issues Dentistry Education

Background Digital Asset Management System (DAMS) at U-M Partnership CARAT/Rackham IT Fellow Media Union Living Lab Vision (Living Lab) Build an environment where assets are easily searched, shared, edited and repurposed in the academic model

Who are the partners … School of Education School of Dentistry School of Literature, Science and Art (Language Resource Center) School of Nursing School of Pharmacy School of Social Work Information Technology Central Services University Libraries

Digital Asset Management System Tool for organizing digital media assets for storage and retrieval Components Repository Database User interface Workflow Not yet commonly used in higher education

Assets Instructional videotapes Instructional software Slide collections (art, medicine, …) Videotapes of invited speakers Videotapes of student performances Fieldwork audio and video Web-based instructional materials

Assets in the university Academic units and assets Create large amounts of perishable intellectual property Preservation and access usually handled by outside agents (academic publishers, libraries) Small subset handled by outside agents Other assets preserved in ad-hoc manner -> Assets not available for reuse

Metadata “data about data” “A cloud of collateral information around a data object” “hooks” by which information objects can be extracted from or found within a repository Example: Mirlyn

DAMS metadata issues Heterogeneous collections with domain- specific description needs, vocabularies Metadata entry will be handled by non- specialists Granularity of description v. effort Consistency v. flexibility Controlled vocabulary v. free text Enable search Across subject areas Over time Provenance

Application profile Proposed by Heery & Patel (2000), UKOLN Combine elements from different metadata schemas Define private (local) elements Optimized for a particular local application Reflects the fact that particular project needs cannot be fully met by a standard “as is”

Process Dekkers (2001): 1. Define metadata requirements 2. Select most appropriate existing standard metadata element set 3. Where possible, use standard elements for locally required elements, possibly narrowing semantics and adding local rule and vocabularies 4. Define remaining elements in private namespace DAMS Pilot 1. Dublin Core selected as basis 2. Assess state of legacy metadata 3. Construct mappings 4. Select appropriate existing standard metadata set for domain-specific elements not covered by Dublin Core 5. Define remaining elements in private namespace

Dublin Core Title Author Subject Description Publisher Contributor Date Resource Type Format Resource identifier Source Language Relations Coverage Rights

Legacy metadata Metadata needs of four partnership units surveyed: LS&A - Language Resource Center Education - Mathematics Teaching and Learning to Teach project Pharmacy Dentistry

Legacy metadata status LS&A - legacy metadata available online; can be exported with some modification Education - legacy metadata exists but is scattered; structure does not allow easy search and retrieval Pharmacy - metadata needs to be extracted or generated from objects Dentistry - some legacy metadata available

Metadata in DAMS Descriptive metadata Dublin Core General, simple metadata standard intended for use by non-specialists IMS Metadata standard focusing on educational uses Metadata automatically collected by Ancept system File size, file name, etc.

UM_Core Minimal level of description for DAMS assets Elements from Dublin Core Local elements Search across collections done through UM_Core elements

UM_Core elements DC_Title DC_Creator DC_Subject UM_SecondarySubject DC_Description DC_Publisher DC_Contributor DC_Date DC_Type DC_Format DC_Identifier DC_Source DC_Language DC_Relation DC_Coverage DC_Rights UM_Publisher UM_AlternatePublisher

Dentistry Assets for pilot Videos of dental procedures Oral pathology slides High-level categories specific for dentistry defined Metadata schema Preliminary metadata schema for video Additional work needed for oral pathology slides Issues Controlled vocabularies (e.g., SNODENT) Incorporating other schema elements (e.g., DICOM)

Education MTLT Videos Associated transcripts Presentations and papers based on above Issues Explore using IMS Identify controlled vocabularies within education Educate asset producers (faculty)

IMS General Lifecycle Metametadata Technical Educational Rights Classification interactivitytype learningresourcetype interactivitylevel semanticdensity intendedenduserrole context typicalagerange difficulty typicallearningtime description language

Questions?