Issues and challenges Stakeholder workshop, 29 Jan 2003

2 Metadata success of a portal will be dependent upon a critical mass of metadata about geo-spatial resources being available in the service how do we encourage documentation of geo-spatial data? –need to assist users in creation –need to provide guidelines that explain the HE/FE Profile metadata elements in a manner that is understood across eclectic range of disciplines how do we encourage people to submit their metadata? –need tools that allow for easy importing of records how do we ensure metadata are comprehensive, current? –need a tool that makes metadata management easy for provider what about issues surrounding dataset access and distribution? –need to address concerns about licensing issues pertaining to derived datasets

3 Data distribution discovery is all very well but what about gaining access provision of metadata may be limited by concerns data producers/custodians have about how they might distribute the data they produce/manage –individuals/departments/institutions are not organised in such a way as to be able to manage distribution of data to people who approach them require mechanism that allows 'publishing' of data also concerns about –terms of use of data –who can have access to them –residual IPR in derived data data archiving/preservation issues also unresolved

4 Spatial searching (I) Searching for resources majority of resources within JISC IE are not explicitly geo-referenced –relying on place names within metadata –geoXwalk providing a partial solution but co-ordinate based geo-referencing is preferred –allows places to be represented by the appropriate footprint, is persistent and a consistent and powerful framework for spatial searching –geo-parser can help (more tomorrow) resource providers not taking need for geo-referencing seriously

5 Spatial searching (II) The Z39.50 software specific instances –doesn't support appropriate profiles e.g. GILS, GEO –spatial searching not enabled in default set up general problems –limited forms of spatial searching supported –uses bounding co-ordinates not polygons = false hits GEO Profile - Dataset G-Polygon use attribute exists but no(?) Z applications support it –test for overlaps and not within, intersects, touches, near GEO Profile - Relations attributes include overlaps, fully enclosed within, encloses, fully outside of, near but no(?) Z applications support more than overlap

6 Other issues relevance ordering of result set (or sub set of) integrating existing geo-spatial data descriptions –e.g. HDS uses DDI not NGDF metadata guidelines search times let’s not forget time (temporal searching) geographic scope of the portal e.g. UK or World what other resources should be cross-searchable? –how do we search for people? use of other technologies e.g. OAI spidering, UDDI/WSDL registry, ZNG/SRW, OpenURL

7  The area of interestThe result