1. The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, The Resource Description Framework, and PURLs November 6, 2000 Stuart Weibel Senior Research Scientist OCLC Office of Research Director, Dublin Core Metadata Initiative Copyright 2000 - All Rights Reserved FAO Workshop on Metadata Standards for Electronic Publishing in Agriculture Brussels, Belgium

2. 2 Metadata for Resource Description and Discovery A resource description community is characterized by common semantic, structural, and syntactic conventions for exchange of resource description information Libraries MARCAACR2

3. 3 The Internet Commons embraces many Resource Description Communities Scientific Data Home Pages Geo Internet Commons Library Museums Commerce Education

4. 4 OK, OK…. (but never mind) COMMERCE

5. 5 DCMI: The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative DCMI is an open consensus building initiative International scope 2 major ‘products’ and supporting documents (so far) A process A community A culture A forum

6. 6 Mission of the DCMI The mission of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) is to make it easier to find resources using the Internet through the following activities: Developing metadata standards for resource discovery across domains Defining frameworks for the interoperation of metadata sets Facilitating the development of community- or domain-specific metadata sets that work within these frameworks

7. 7 Scope of Activities Standards Development meetings and workshops to support development of standards and best practice Communications Website, working drafts, documentation, recommendations, mailing lists... Liaisons Promote interoperability through liaison activities with other initiatives Tools and Services promote availability of tools to support creation, management, and use of DC metadata Metadata Registry:infrastructure for managing vocabularies in multiple languages Research Advance the infrastructure and frameworks to support metadata interoperability

8. 8 Liaisons IEEE-LOM, IMS Education Resources GILS MPEG W3C Open Archives Initiative Electronic Theses and Dissertations RSS XML.COM Development of liaisons with other metadata activities will improve prospects for interoperability

9. 9 The Dublin Core Metadata Element Set Title Author/Creator Subject /Keywords Description Publisher Other Contributor Date Resource Type Format Resource Identifier Source Language Relation Coverage Rights Management

10. 10 Dublin Core Workshop Series Chicago WWW Conference Oct, 1994 OCLC/NCSA Metadata Workshop Mar, 1995 OCLC/UKOLN Warwick Workshop, UKApr, 1996 CNI/OCLC Image Metadata WorkshopSep, 1996 DC-4, Canberra, AustraliaMar, 1997 DC-5, Helsinki, FinlandOct, 1997 DC-6, Washington, DC, USANov, 1998 DC-7, Frankfurt, GermanyOct, 1999 DC-8, Ottawa, Canada Oct, 2000

11. 11 The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative Dublin Core Web Site http://purl.org.dc http://dublincore.org DC-General Dublin Core Mail Server Working Groups DC Advisory Committee Dublin Core Directorate DC Executive Committee Stakeholder Communities

12. 12 Adoption by Major Communities Australia, Denmark, Finland: public information discovery Cultural heritage institutions Libraries Educational resources Print and Preprint archives NASA/JPL image archives Software repositories eBooks Financial and Insurance industries Aerospace and Automotive applications GIS applications Health Commerce: information syndication (RSS)

13. 13 DCMI Open Source Software Collaborative development promotes community commitment Promote toolkits, utilities, and applications that support the creation, management, and exploitation of metadata We hope many will contribute

14. 14 DCMI Open Metadata Registry EOR: Managing vocabularies defined by DCMI Languages Versioning Controlled vocabularies Foundation for modular, incremental integration and evolution Collaboration with European Schema project, ULIS in Tsukuba, Japan, ILRT (SchemaRama) in Bristol http://rdf.dev.oclc.org/myrdf/services/EOpenRegistry

15. 15 LCNAF MARC-Relater Codes Jurisdiction DCMI Matrix of Semantics and Communities Title Creator Publisher Contributor Date Relation Source Identifier Language Subject Description Coverage Format Type Rights DCMI Audience DC-Education DC-Library DC-Government

16. 16 Alternative Representations of DC Metadata Japanese English Portuguese Danish

17. 17 The Complete Matrix: A registry of metadata Semantics

18. 18 Standardization CEN Workshop Agreement formalized in January, 2000 Endorse Version 1.1 Dublin Core element set as CWA 13874 Providing guidelines for industry to assist the adoption of Dublin Core in Europe Establishing active participation and contributions from relevant projects and activities, resulting in a web based "Observatory" on European work on metadata.

19. 19 Launched: January 15, 1999 as cooperative OCLC research project Re-release: July 1, 2000 as integrated OCLC library service Key objectives: Ongoing user input to shape features and priorities International scope, global use Minimize redundant effort by libraries Release system quickly, improve continuously Embrace key international standards purl.oclc.org/corc CORC: Cooperative Online Resource Catalog

20. 20 CORC’s key features Requires only Web-browser for access/use Incorporates key international standards: Metadata: Dublin Core, AACR2/MARC Characters: Unicode, ALA Character Set Automates the creation and maintenance of: Resource records (bibliographic records)  Including URL management (automation + cooperation) Authority records (established forms of names) Pathfinders (Webliographies) Offers Web access to DDC Integrated with OCLC Cataloging & FirstSearch

21. 21 NISO NISO: Z39.85 Fast Track balloting concluded August 15; Z39.85 has been approved, pending completion of administrative requirements ISO Fast track process is a natural successor

22. 22 RDF Resource Description Framework W3C’s RDF Resource Description Framework Resources  anything that can be identified Description Framework  Design of enabling technologies to support description of these resources

23. 23 RDF is... Data Model Model to support a web of named relationships connecting uniquely identified things. XML representation Designed to impose structural constraint on syntax to support consistent encoding, exchange and processing of metadata Schema Enables resource description communities to a consistent means of declaring vocabularies Enable reuse (museum, library, e-commerce…) Bootstraps Data Model

24. 24 What you really need to know about RDF It is XML based XML DTDs… extensibility is a problem RDF Schemas and XML Schemas are at least partially in competition, and the dust has not settled The market place will tell us…

25. 25 RDF Schema Designed to enable resource description communities the ability to define (and share) vocabularies Support basic semantic integrity constraints Characteristics of classes or properties and/or constraints on corresponding values Support basic semantic relations “Illustrator” is a refinement of “Creator” Designed to be extended

26. 26 RDF Statements … http://doc http://Stu … http://doc bib:author Statement (http://doc, bib:author, http://Stu)http://doc http://Stu

27. 27 RDF Example 1 “Stuart Weibel” URI:R “FAO Presentation” title creator dc: <rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf=“http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-rdf-syntax#” xmlns:dc=“http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/”> FAO Presentation Stuart Weibel

28. 28 RDF Example 2 URI:R “FAO Presentation” title creator dc: <rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf=“http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-rdf-syntax#” xmlns:dc=“http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/”> FAO Presentation URI:Stu

29. 29 “Eric Miller” RDF Data Model Example 3 URI:R “FAO Presentation” title creator dc: URI:ERIC URI:Stu “stu@oclc.org” “Stuart Weibel” “OCLC” bib:emailbib:aff bib:name URI:OCLC URI:Person rdf:type

30. 30 PURLs Persistent URLs

31. 31 Persistence Persistence of Naming Persistence of content is a different problem -- digital archiving -- and its REALLY hard Persistent names are NOT a matter of technology Commitment of organizations charged with responsibility for managing content and access Technology is only a part of the solution (and it’s the easy part)

32. 32 PURL Persistent URLs In Computer Science: no problem that cannot be solved with an additional level of indirection! PURLs: Redirect a symbolic name to a network location No New Technology! Simple public domain db URLs simple tools to manage the PURLs It’s free (http://purl.org)

33. 33 Persistent Naming of Resources Naming is easy: even the State of Ohio can do it Naming is hard: the IETF has failed to do it for years (URNs) Naming is contentious: There are many naming schemes, tailored for different purposes But it is going to happen… it is necessary

34. 34 OCLC’s Naming Service Under development (Albert Simmonds Basic Model: Give me a name Ask for a service Provide an architecture for the OPEN definition of services that can be applied to known resources integrate sectors… for profit, not for profit, governmental, supra-governmental….

35. 35 Examples of Services on Names Given a named resource… let me buy it let me borrow it give me the citation show me the metadata show me the title page show me a review let me write a review tell me who owns it ….

36. 36 Impediments Legacy systems ISBN, ISSN, Name Authorities, DUNs Numbers, on and on and on…. Architectures Probably best to avoid the Unitary Theory of Naming Business models are shaky Who pays for maintaining persistence of naming and content? Libraries? Publishers? Users? Governments?

37. 37 Additional Information Dublin Core Home page http://purl.org/dc W3C RDF Home Page http://www.w3.org/RDF EOR Demo http://wip.dublincore.org