John and Steve

I think that crucial thing here is the decision itself on
how to treat annotational material (as a resource or as a
metadata).

LOM assumes that *some* annotational material can be treated
as metadata and become part of metadata (to call it 'secondary metadata'
was challenged and accepted to be un-wise)

However implementors may need or may choose to treat annotational material
as a resource which then affects two levels

a) resource management b) resource discovery

Once one defines something as a resource on has to describe it
i.e. has to produce metadata for it, irrespective its type.
Linking between primary and belonging 'secondary' resource is no
different from linking of any other two primary resources - through
the choice of appropriate relationships.

The type of resource, however, is very relevant for
discovery.  Among learningResourceTypes one should have resource type
according
to their function in education and this is where material supporting
teaching/teachers should have its representation. The concepts 'primary',
'secondary'
are implicit to the function and not necessary to introduce or treat
as something special. For resource discovery or management primary/secondary
differentiation is irrelevant.

aida
-----Original Message-----
From: The CETIS Metadata Special Interest Group
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of John Casey {DAICE}
Sent: 16 October 2003 13:13
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Secondary metadata


Hi Steve
Yes the area is fascinating - or at least, for me, the bit where educators
and others talk 'subjectively' about a resource they have looked at or used.

I am in no way an expert in thse fields,as should be becoming clear to you
all :-) but the comments Aida Slavic has made seem to make a lot of sense to
me namely that the subjective comments, reviews, tutor notes etc are best
regarded as 'secondary resources' ie resources (in their own right) about
other resources and not as a form of metadata.

I think the 'term secondary' resources is about right to describe these
types of information we are using a number of approaches  to describe these
subjective resources that include:

ideas for media redesign
a set of 12 cognitive terms as the basis of  an educational analysis and
evaluation system for the learning materials
ideas for what a teacher would do with the materials
ideas for what a student would do with the materials

So for us and probably many others this kind of resource can be more than
just 'tutor notes' or 'further information', thats why I think a broad term
like secondary resources is a good choice - what goes in the secondary
resources is not specififed.

So what is the annotations field there for? Well, know I know a bit more
about what secondary metadata is not - I don't know maybe the IMS folks
thought it was a good idea? I think we need to remember that it is still
early days in this area. This field might be useful to add general comments
that don't 'fit' anywhere else?

I think your comments about meta- metadata make sense


> John Casey
> Project Officer
> Learning to Learn  - an X4L Project
> DAICE
> Airthrey Castle
> University of Stirling
> Stirling
> FK9 4LA
> Tel: +44 (0)1786 467943
> email: [log in to unmask]
        web: http://www.stir.ac.uk/departments/daice/l2l/


-----Original Message-----
From: SRogers [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 16 October 2003 12:38
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Secondary metadata


Hi All

I found your recent debate regarding secondary metadata fascinating
particularly as I have to investigate it as part of a literature review for
the JORUM+ project.

I would be grateful if anybody could confirm this for me but strictly
speaking secondary metadata is "used to describe Features of the description
rather than the resource" and therefore is another term for 'metametadata',
is this correct? So examples of secondary metadata would be creator and date
of creation of the metadata record? With that in mind, the issue of
subjective comments about resources being termed as secondary metadata is
incorrect and should fields like the annotation field be included as a
metadata field as this is undoubtedly going to lead to confusion on this
subject?

Kind Regards

Steve

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