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

2. Overview Background and objectives Implementation and evolution
Extensions of AGLS
Review
The future 2

3. 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

4. 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

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

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

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

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

9. 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

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

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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

16. 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 16

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

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

19. 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

20. 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

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

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

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

24. 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; ; Beef Cattle Farm Worker" /> 24

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

26. 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

27. 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

28. 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 (
Convergence/interoperability with AGRkMS
RK Document Form  AGLS Document
Remain consistent with DC 28