Metadata : Concentrating on the data, not on the scheme Imma Subirats FAO of the United Nations Marcia Zeng Kent State University euroCRIS Meeting Bologna (Italy) April 26-27, 2011

FAO AIMS Agricultural Information Management Standards

Background The first step for contributing “LOD” LODE Recommendations –LODE-BD introduction –The decision trees Outline

Background

Refers to a set of best practices for publishing, sharing, and interlinking structured data on the Web Key technologies URIs for identifying entities or concepts in the world RDF model for structuring and linking descriptions of things HTTP for retrieving resources or descriptions of resources Linked Open Data

Breaking Silos, Linking Data! Linking Open Data cloud diagram as of , by Richard Cyganiak and Anja Jentzsch.

Guidelines and recommendations on what standards to follow and how to prepare LOD- ready metadata are essential There is no one-size-fits-all approach During the last two decades a great number of metadata-related standards have been created by different communities for specifics purposes. Decisions on what standard(s) to adopt will directly impact the degree of LOD-readiness of the bibliographic data Metadata Standards

The first step for contributing to "LOD"

…are likely to have specific questions about encoding strategies, such as: Data and service providers… What metadata standard(s) should be used? What is the minimal set of properties meaningful in data sharing? Is there any metadata model or application profile that can be reused or followed? What kind of value should we exchange: the literal forms representing a concept or the URI identifying the concept ? How should we encode our data?

LODE Recommendations LOD-Enabled

To assist information professionals to decide what metadata terms to use when encoding existing bibliographic data To provide a set of recommendations that will support the selection of appropriate encoding strategies for producing LOD-enabled data Objectives LOD-Enabled

To promote the use of well-established metadata standards To encourage the use of authority data, controlled vocabularies, and syntax encoding standards whenever possible To encourage the use of resource URIs as names for things for data values when they are available To facilitate the decision-making process regarding data encoding for the purpose of exchange and reuse To provide a reference support that is open for suggestions of new properties and metadata terms 5 Principles LOD-Enabled

The LODE-Bibliographical Data (LODE-BD) LOD-Enabled BD

a reference tool in selecting appropriate encoding strategies – uses flowcharts to present individualized decision trees for metadata properties aims to address two questions – how to encode bibliographic data for the purpose of exchanging data; and – how to encode these data as Linked Open Data (LOD) - enabled bibliographic data LODE-BD

Once a content provider has decided to publish a bibliographical database as Linked Open Data…. LOD-Enabled BD

What kinds of entities and relationships are involved in bibliographic resource description? Thema Resource Agent

What properties should be considered for publishing meaningful/useful LOD-ready bibliographic data? 1. Title Information 2. Responsible Body 3. Physical Characteristics 4. Location 5. Subject 6. Description of content 7. Intellectual property 8. Usage 9. Relation between documents / agents

A selected widely-used metadata standards and the emerging LOD- enabled vocabularies dc:Dublin Core Metadata Element Set dcterms: DCMI Metadata Terms bibo:Bibliographic Ontology agls: AGLS Metadata Standard (Australian Government Locator Service) ags: AgMES (Agricultural Metadata Element set) eprint: Eprints Terms, UKOLN marcrel: MARC List for Relators What metadata standards should be used for preparing LOD-ready metadata?

What metadata terms are appropriate in any given property for publishing LOD-ready metadata based on a local database?

Decision Trees LOD-Enabled BD

Assisting in the metadata term selection process Flowcharts to present individualized decision trees for the properties included in each of the nine groups –Starting from the property that describes a resource instance, each flowchart presents decision points and gives a step-by-step solution to a given problem of metadata encoding –designed to facilitate the selection of the appropriate strategies adjustable to data providers according to their situations Decision Trees LOD-Enabled BD

At the end of each flowchart there are alternative sets of metadata terms for selection Each chart is followed by the text-based explanations corresponding to the flowchart, with notes, steps, and examples whenever necessary in the tables Decision Trees LOD-Enabled BD

Decision Trees Subject

Decision Trees Responsible Body. Creator

Step Forward References and Links How to publish and consume Linked Data Where to find Linked Data sets and Vocabularies How to express metadata with different syntaxes: text, html, xml, rdf, and rdfa Why publish bibliographic data as Linked Data LOD-Enabled BD

The AIMS Team euroCRIS Meeting Bologna (Italy) April 26-27, 2011