1. RSLP Collection Description Concertation Day 23 October 2000 Andy Powell, UKOLN a.powell@ukoln.ac.uk RSLP Collection Description UKOLN is funded by Resource: The Council for Museums, Archives & Libraries, the Joint Information Systems Committee of the Higher Education Funding Councils, as well as by project funding from the JISC’s Electronic Libraries Programme and the European Union. UKOLN also receives support from the University of Bath where it is based.

2. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 2 Aims overview of... model schema tool data entry guidelines scene setting implementation issues

3. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 3 Environment... within libraries (in particular)… item level description widespread little or no collection level description existing CLD is often unstructured or semi-structured (Web pages)... …or limited to particular kinds of collections - e.g. OPACs difficult to disclose existence of collections - e.g. The Pitman Collection at Bath

4. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 4 Project aims... consistent collection description across RSLP as a whole minimise duplicated effort across RSLP develop collection descriptions that are fairly high-level fairly simple broadly aligned with similar work elsewhere (e.g. Dublin Core, EAD) demonstrate benefits of approach through a cross-RSLP search service

5. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 5 Wider environment... the Internet changes things domain boundaries are breaking down no longer possible or sensible to operate within a single domain part of a wider cultural resource end-users expect to use the Internet to work across libraries, museums, archives and other material......across physical and digital material

6. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 6 What is a collection? an aggregation of one or more items... library collections museum collections archives library, museum and archival catalogues digital archives Internet directories Internet subject gateways robot generated Web indexes collections of text, images, sounds, datasets, software, other material or combinations of these (this includes databases, CD-ROMs and collections of Web resources) other collections of physical items.

7. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 7 Purpose... disclosure by collection owners/curators discovery by end-users collection management/development collection descriptions allow... users to discover and locate collections of interest, users to perform searches across multiple collections in a controlled way, software to perform such tasks on behalf of users, based on known user preferences.

8. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 8 RSLP Model based on a library and archival view of ‘collection’ - but not exclusively......applicable across wide range of collection types developed by Michael Heaney at Oxford (with funding from OCLC) is functionally concerned with finding identifying (describing sufficiently well)

9. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 9 deals with all types of material not just digital not tied to an implementation models collections and their ‘catalogues’ relationships between collections and collection descriptions 4 different kinds of collection description external relationships - relations between collections and other collections/resources RSLP Model (2)

10. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 10 Administrator Location Model (simplified view) Collection Item Content Collector Owner Producer Creator

11. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 11 What is a collection? "an aggregation of physical and/or electronic items" natural objects created objects digital objects substitutes for objects –surrogates –metadata!

12. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 12 Nested collections model is flexible says nothing about collection size possible to model complex relationships between collections......particularly hasPart, isPartOf type relationships use of model driven by functional requirements

13. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 13 What is a location? “the physical or digital place where a collection is held” physical location - e.g. a library or museum postal address digital location - e.g. an online service URL, Z39.50 target details,... note distinction between place and institution responsible for the place - latter represented by Administrator

14. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 14 What is an agent? “a person or corporate body related to the collection or location” agents... initiate actions have rights collector, owner, administrator

15. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 15 What is an agent? (2) collector - gathers items into a collection owner - has legal possession of a collection administrator - has responsibility for the physical or electronic environment in which a collection is held

16. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 16 Owners and administrators agents can have many roles at once agents control access access to location access to collection agents control use? copyrights ownership

17. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 17 External relationships relationships between collections/collection descriptions Has-Part, Has-Complement –parts to wholes Has-Association –collection to collection Has-Publication –collection to publication Is-Described-By –collection to collection description

18. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 18 Schema structured set of metadata attributes concerned with the simple description of Collections Locations Agents –collectors –owners –administrators based on Dublin Core where possible

19. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 19 What this schema is not! NOT a replacement for existing detailed collection description formats (e.g. EAD) NOT a replacement for MARC NOT a replacement for Dublin Core clearly NOT the answer to all collection description problems!

20. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 20 Administrator Location Schema vs. model Collection Item Content Collector Owner Producer Creator

21. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 21 Collection attributes general attributes title, identifier, description, strength, physical characteristics, language, type, access control, accrual status, legal status, custodial history, note subject attributes concept(s), object(s), name(s), place(s), time(s) date attributes contents date range, accumulation date range

22. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 22 Location attributes general attributes name, identifier, access conditions, see also location postal address, postcode, country, locator

23. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 23 Agent attributes general attributes name, organisation, role, phone, fax, email, agent history

24. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 24 Relation attributes relations between collection and location hasLocation/isLocationFor relations between collection and agent collector (creator), owner relations between location and agent administrator relations between collections (external) hasPart/isPartOf, hasDescription/isDescriptionOf, hasAssociation, hasPublication

25. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 25 Syntax - RDF Resource Description Framework (RDF) W3C recommendation for metadata on the Web resource discovery, content rating, e- commerce, personal profiles,... XML syntax - tagged language Dublin Core involvement beginning to see active development of RDF tools and applications though perhaps slower than expected

26. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 26 Syntax - RDF (2) simple “resource, property, value” model… Resource has a Property with value Value a resource can be ‘anything’ - identified using a URI a property is an attribute of the resource - again identified using a URI a value is either a string value or another resource

27. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 27 Syntax - RDF (3) Collection A has a title with value “The Pitman Collection” Collection B has a location with value “Location X” Location X has a title with value “The University of Bath Library” Location X has a postalAddress with value “University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY”

28. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 28 RDF/XML example <rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.0/”> The Pitman Collection

29. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 29 RDF/XML syntax collection description record made up of linked set of descriptions of collection location collector(s) owner(s) administrator(s) schema and RDF syntax are NOT a full implementation of the model

30. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 30 Why RDF? semantic Web RDF is XML......but it’s not any old XML! XML provides structure RDF provides semantics XML tools have to have embedded knowledge of semantics RDF tools more likely to be able to ‘understand’ arbitrary RDF descriptions

31. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 31 But... RDF is new so implementation experience is limited Dublin Core being modified in parallel with our work D-Lib article has resulted in some RDF syntax issues being raised by DC/RDF experts this will result in some minor changes to the schema and syntax NOT changes to model

32. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 32 Collection types enumerated list of collection types terms split into four areas type, curatorial environment, content, policy/usage terms joined with ‘.’s to form value examples... Collection.Library.Dispersed Catalogue.Museum Finding-Aid Collection.Archive Index.Internet Catalogue.Internet.Subject Collection.Image

33. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 33 Tool Web-based tool create collection descriptions that conform to the model and schema NOT a full implementation of the schema display descriptions as RDF and text/HTML save descriptions as RDF and text/HTML load RDF descriptions back into tool for further editing (available in next few weeks) built-in help

34. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 34 Implementation options... use the Web-based tool centrally mounted service slow? may not integrate with workflow well? use project database (e.g. MS-Access or ROADS database) currently not possible to generate RDF from example MS-Access database use something else, e.g. EAD, within project - export as RDF Issue: effort to develop mapping and conversion tools?

35. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 35 Extending the Schema...? key parts of the model/schema separation of the ‘collection’ from its ‘location’ separation of the ‘location’ from its ‘administrator’ new attributes can be added to the schema......must be added at the right point in the model

36. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 36 Relationship to EAD many RSLP projects also contributing to UK HE archives hub supplying EAD to the hub RSLP schema modified to take on board comments from the archival community EAD / RSLP schema mapping possible EAD / RSLP conversion tools could be developed......but not within the current project!

37. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 37 Prototype search service central database of RSLP collection description searchable NOT a replacement for project database NOT intended to integrate into project Web sites demonstrator only NOT available currently

38. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 38 Pull model you create descriptions in RDF using one of the methods outlined you store them somewhere on your Web- site we provide a Web form that allows you tell us the URL of the place where you are storing them we gather them into the central database using a Web-robot Web form NOT yet available

39. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 39 Other work... Museums Cornucopia (24-Hour museum) NPO Register of Collection Strengths and Preservation Status UK HE Distributed National Electronic Resource Archive Hub Dublin Core Meeting at DC-8 DCMI Collection Description WG

40. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 40 Other work... (2) Public libraries Futures Together Full Disclosure NOF Europe Renardus project National Library of Australia National Library of Canada British Library

41. Concertation Day - Oct 2000 41 Conclusions model - good basis for this work schema - reasonable compromise between simplicity and complexity RDF/XML - correct syntax choice Web tool still not ready :-( underestimated requirement for project’s own tools misunderstandings about function of ‘search service’ caused confusion widespread interest in this work