1. w w w. i l u m i n a – d l i b. o r g IMS Metadata in a Digital Library: Experiences from iLumina IMS Member Exchange November, 2001 David McArthur, Sarah Giersch & Marty McClelland Funding provided by the National Science Foundation DLI-Phase 2, NSF Award #0002935 A Digital Library of Reusable Science and Math Resources for Undergraduate Education

2. w w w. i l u m i n a – d l i b. o r g iLumina’s Vision The situation: e-learning will create a huge demand for high-quality digital course content Publishers will meet some of this demand through ebooks Instructors will still need informal digital modules to complement and tailor ebooks to specific courses The opportunity: The Internet now provides a scalable way to implement peer- centric sharing of informal digital content iLumina is a digital library that will realize this opportunity

3. w w w. i l u m i n a – d l i b. o r g iLumina’s Main Themes Featuring diverse, small-scale SMETE resources, especially ones created by instructors Promoting sharing, reuse and re-construction of resources through selected services and tools Using IMS’s rich and standard metadata to describe resources Keeping the cost of metadata low: Simplifying the creation of new metadata; efficient mapping of existing metadata Making the benefits metadata high: Developing services underpinned by IMS metadata (e.g., recommendations as well as search and browse) Implementing a partially centralized (metadata) and partly distributed (content) architecture

4. w w w. i l u m i n a – d l i b. o r g What has iLumina Accomplished to Date? Implemented IMS metadata information model (v 1.2) Developed metadata tools based on IMS model Cataloged 700+ granular SMETE resources Included 6 distinct collections in iLumina –3 resident (content and metadata in iLumina) –3 distributed (content remote and metadata in iLumina) Implemented essential library services (search, browse and contribute), underpinned by IMS metadata Began developing extended library services (collection display, review and ratings) Coordinated with SMETE.ORG for federated cross-repository search using common IMS/IEE LOM/DC Core element set

5. w w w. i l u m i n a – d l i b. o r g Non-iLumina/IMS metadata iLumina/IMS metadata Digital Content Existing Repositories … CSTCSECDLOther Individual Contributions iLumina Open iLumina Content Review Cataloging Tool final Informal Collections UNCW Mathwright … Other Mapping Tool Cataloging Tool * * Construction Services Community Services Search Services User metadata Architecture Overview Recommendations Personalizations Formal peer review User ratings/review General forums Suggestion Boxes Flexible Retrieval Browsing Faceted Search Basic Search Resource Integrator Author Cataloging

6. w w w. i l u m i n a – d l i b. o r g Acquiring Metadata Solutions to minimize the cost of metadata creation: 1) Require that a limited number of elements be completed (Title, Discipline) 2) Automate completion of some elements (Contributor) 3) Design efficient interfaces 4) Educate users through point-of- need help screens

7. w w w. i l u m i n a – d l i b. o r g Finding Resources with Metadata The elements available for Advanced Search are a subset of the elements on the Contribution Form. iLumina offers users the ability to perform nuanced searches using different IMS metadata elements, their vocabularies and logical combinations of them.

8. w w w. i l u m i n a – d l i b. o r g Extending Metadata Use The Browse Page uses a limited number of IMS elements to organize navigation of library resources.

9. w w w. i l u m i n a – d l i b. o r g Collection-level Metadata iLumina makes collections of resources accessible via a collection-level metadata record.

10. w w w. i l u m i n a – d l i b. o r g IMS Metadata Elements: The Good, the Questionable and the Missing Complete implementation of the IMS information model (v 1.2) Selective support of elements in iLumina services –Can import and export all IMS compliant metadata records –Creates metadata with only a subset of elements –Searches on a smaller subset Why selective use of elements?  Many of the Educational elements appear not particularly well-defined or useful for our contributors and end-users  Some are not cost-effective unless gathered automatically  Others, such as Rights, are inadequate for their implied task  A few, like Annotation, would be better included in non-cataloging metadata records Only two new elements added: – General.Thumbnail – Technical.MediaType

11. w w w. i l u m i n a – d l i b. o r g IMS Vocabularies: Few Standards and Many Choices iLumina changes from IMS Default nonelots General.Language Technical.Format Educational.InteractivityType Educational.SemanticDensity Educational.Context Educational.Difficulty Rights.Cost Rights.Copyright… LifeCycle.Status Educational.InteractivityLevel Educational.IntendedEndUserRole General.Structure Technical.Requirement.Type Technical. Requirement.Name Relation.Kind LifeCycle.Contribute.Role Technical.MediaType Educational.Learning- ResourceType Few standards means: Different communities will adopt multiple different vocabularies Metadata tools must facilitate the easy change of vocabulary schemas and the mapping of vocabularies

12. w w w. i l u m i n a – d l i b. o r g General Metadata Results Multiple metadata uses: IMS metadata may pay for its high production costs by underpinning multiple services –Search and discovery –Browsing –Collection-level discovery and comprehension –Formal reviews –Composite learning object description and production (?) Less is more: Extended descriptions should be modularized, not bundled into core catalog records; this can improve functionality –Annotations and informal reviews and ratings are in separate dynamic records –DRM for a resource is independent from core catalog metadata –Detailed agent profiles not embedded in entity values (vcards)  Offload some description to other specs: Packaging, LIP, DR …

13. w w w. i l u m i n a – d l i b. o r g HTML SQL Server 2000 XSLT IIS web server request XSP: xml server page Cocoon:XML publishing Tomcat:servlet engine MS ASP ASP response XSP JDBC ODBC response System Architecture Diagram

14. w w w. i l u m i n a – d l i b. o r g Implementation Tradeoffs relational data base windows platform ASP Microsoft technologies spaghetti code iLumina specific existing skills rapid development xml flat file any platform Java open source XML/XSLT reusable/generic tools learning curve impact ease of maintenance

15. w w w. i l u m i n a – d l i b. o r g Database Design Considerations structure of metadata persistence facilitate typical user searches speed of search and data display import of data from other repositories export of data on demand maintenance data integrity support IMS Metadata v1.2 specification

16. w w w. i l u m i n a – d l i b. o r g Non-IMS DB Fields xml – metadata in IMS v1.2 xml format xmltext – text only ( exclude tags ) of xml field availability – yes/no availability_description – ex: repository down for backup accepted_date – metadata is public when accepted last_modified_date – used for OAI harvesting centity – table for agent xcard elements mediatype – image, video, audio, executable....

17. w w w. i l u m i n a – d l i b. o r g References and Sources Our project website: http://www.ilumina-dlib.orghttp://www.ilumina-dlib.org Project papers on the site: –JERIC: Towards a Sharable Digital Library of Reusable Teaching Resources: Roles for Rich Metadata. Journal on Education Resources in Computing (JERIC). –JCDL: Developing Recommendation Services for a Digital Library with Uncertain and Changing Data. Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL) –JLibAdmin: Library Services Today and Tomorrow: Lessons from iLumina, a Digital Library for Creating and Sharing Teaching Resources. Journal of Library Administration.