1. 1 QA Focus – Supporting JISC's Digital Library Programmes QA For Metadata: Exercise 1 Brian Kelly and Amanda Closier UKOLN Gareth Knight AHDS This presentation reviews the exercise in use of the and HTML tags which highlight general issues concerning use of metadata

2. 2 QA Focus – Supporting JISC's Digital Library Programmes QA For Metadata Exercise 1 In small groups you attempted exercise 1a: Policies to ensure your acronyms and abbreviations are interoperable Procedures to ensure your policies are implemented correctly We will now review: Areas of difficulties in using these tags Justification for using such metadata Interoperability issues Quality Assurance

3. 3 QA Focus – Supporting JISC's Digital Library Programmes About and Tags The tag indicates an abbreviated form (e.g., WWW, HTML, URI, et al. etc.) and includes initialisms. The tag indicates an acronym (e.g., FAIR, CETIS, etc.). The title attribute can be used to provide the full or expanded form of an expression. Examples: WWW JISC Background See W3C's definition of these tags

4. 4 QA Focus – Supporting JISC's Digital Library Programmes Benefits Accessibility Speaking browsers will speak out: Individual letters of abbreviations – e.g. WWW as Double-You – Double-You – Double-You – Double- You Acronyms as a word – e.g. JISC as Jisc Interoperability Tom Heath's acronym robot can create an automated glossary See acronym tool - Background

5. 5 QA Focus – Supporting JISC's Digital Library Programmes Acronym Tag: Issues (1) People don’t know this tag exists! Confusion over whether or is used  All acronyms are abbreviations, but all abbreviations are not acronyms  Acronyms can be considered a subset of abbreviations Lack of consistency in way words are pronounced e.g. FAQ, SQL, URL, … Changes over time e.g. origins of radar, laser, etc. Cultural differences (US vs UK English) Issues See discussion of issues

6. 6 QA Focus – Supporting JISC's Digital Library Programmes Acronym Tag: Issues (2) Some abbreviations are confusing because they: Are excepted into everyday language e.g. info, Mac Are abbreviated in one language but spoken in others e.g. e.g short for exempli gratia but used as for example No longer mean anything e.g. UKOLN Should they be marked up? Does the reader need more information? How relevant are they? Do we use: e.g. Issues

7. 7 QA Focus – Supporting JISC's Digital Library Programmes Acronym Tag: Issues (3) Issues about how the terms are marked-up: Nesting decisions e.g. FAQs in the tags vs just FAQ with the 's' left outside (FAQs) Capitalisation in the meanings e.g. hewlett-packard vs Hewlett-Packard Punctuation e.g. I.T. vs IT Formal expansion of chatty text Changes in meaning of acronym … FAILTE or FAILTE FAILTE or FAILTE Issues

8. 8 QA Focus – Supporting JISC's Digital Library Programmes Acronym Tag: Issues (4) Do we markup phrases based on: Policies & definitions Browser support Note that Opera & Mozilla support the tags but IE does not Issues: The markup takes time and as the most popular browser doesn't support it, it's not worth doing It's a standard, so we should do it It provides interoperability, so we should do it IE is evil, so we should do it … Issues: The markup takes time and as the most popular browser doesn't support it, it's not worth doing It's a standard, so we should do it It provides interoperability, so we should do it IE is evil, so we should do it … Issues

9. 9 QA Focus – Supporting JISC's Digital Library Programmes Acronym Tag: Issues (5) Markup errors: rather than Markup in attributes: Use of foo "> or W orld W ide.. Invalid characters: Unescaped character entities such as & (& ) Incorrect content: XML Issues Use automated validators Needs manual checking

10. 10 QA Focus – Supporting JISC's Digital Library Programmes Acronym Tag: Issues (6) How should you create and manage your acronym and abbreviation markup? Create by hand Functionality provided by your CMS Dedicated tools e.g. acrobot http://www.accessify.com/ tools-and-wizards/acrobot/ http://www.accessify.com/ tools-and-wizards/acrobot/ Issues

11. 11 QA Focus – Supporting JISC's Digital Library Programmes Acronym Tag: Issues (7) Can the benefits provided justify the costs of implementation? Automated Glossary The acronym harvester and glossary tool provide a lightweight mechanism for producing a glossary If every JISC project marked up acronyms on their home page (project names, organisations, technologies) this could provide a simple but effective mechanism for providing a glossary http://www.materials.ac.uk/ acronyms/location.asp http://www.materials.ac.uk/ acronyms/location.asp Issues Note the acronyms have been marked up in QA Focus documents – project names come from the case studies

12. 12 QA Focus – Supporting JISC's Digital Library Programmes Acronym Tag: Issues (8) Choosing Or Creating A Schema What schema should we use for our metadata (i.e. how do we structure our metadata)? Do we use a standard schema (good for interoperability) or develop our own (may provide better support for local needs) Acronym Example: It would be useful to split acronyms into project names, organisations, technologies and other Could be implemented with JISC But how do we get consensus on schema, implement support in tools, validate, get buy-in, … Issues

13. 13 QA Focus – Supporting JISC's Digital Library Programmes Acronym Tag: Solutions To deal with the issues when using the acronym and abbr tags QA Focus have developed: A documented policy:  Oxford ED  No punctuation  Formal definition – additional info in normal text A set of procedures:  Staff development  Automated validation  Ad hoc manual checking to spot content errors Justification – automated glossary for Web site (possibly contributing to glossary across projects?) Ideally support would be built into a CMS, but we currently don't use a CMS Solutions

14. 14 QA Focus – Supporting JISC's Digital Library Programmes Conclusions This simple example illustrates several points: Metadata is not just about resource discovery Metadata needs managing Before you can manage your metadata you will need policies so you (and others) have an agreed and shared understanding It is always useful to make use of a standard But standards can sometimes be flawed, inconsistent, etc. Support for your metadata may also be incomplete You should think carefully about your approach for managing your metadata You don't have to use metadata!

15. 15 QA Focus – Supporting JISC's Digital Library Programmes Exercise 1b You wish to create and manage metadata for your 5,000 tracks on your 20 Gb MP3 player. Additional challenges: application hardwired in player, no open source solution Issues: Choice of file format: Universal MP3 or better but more proprietary WMA format Selection of genres: Leave to central database or use own schema e.g. house, acid, garage vs modern rubbish :-) File names: Player plays tracks in alphabetic order so need artist – track_no. – track_title and not track_title. But if multiple artists on CD need CD_name – track_no. – track_title Interoperability: Decisions taken for me & my player or allow for further players, family's music metadata, … Other issues: Compilation CDs, collections, physical CDs,...

16. 16 QA Focus – Supporting JISC's Digital Library Programmes Conclusions (1b) Further conclusions: Policies are needed even for small-scale personal applications You can't always program your way out of difficulties There may be conflicts between local usage and wider interoperability There is a need to be aware of how applications will use your metadata, so you shouldn't develop your metadata model and policies independently of the applications Note that managing a 20 Gb MP3 music player containing 5,000+ tracks has similarities to managing a small library!

17. 17 QA Focus – Supporting JISC's Digital Library Programmes Any Questions?