Hi Folks,
This is a kind of side track, however, there is some relevance... so
here goes,, take it or leave it... just food for thought really... I
would appreciate any comments:
How about a system that only requires three pieces of information for
it to become a searchable resource,,, title, description and url (Im an
advocate of the Dave Davies' school of RSS for Interoperability - but
see the benefits of more complete records i.e. LOM or whatever) the
rest of the metadata is optional but will be very easy to add in at a
later stage...
Ill give a (simplified) example:
Professor X finds resource... wants to share, but isn't a trained
cataloger
So they simply add in title description and url... and the resource is
entered into the catalogue
Cataloger Q comes along and sees a flag denoting an incomplete record
and adds in the extra information, (how is a different issue I wont go
into here, I have ideas for this) but is unsure on the MIME type
because they haven't had training in that area...
MIME Magician M comes along and attributes the correct MIME type
resulting in a complete record...
Some of this information could be added automatically as records are
harvested from one system to another...???
Yes I know this will produce a system of (temporarily) incomplete LOM
records, but I don't see this as a problem... so long as there are
people who fulfill roles Q and M which there would have to be anyway..
right?
any thoughts?
Kind regards
Steve
On 5 Mar 2004, at 15:27, Sarah Currier wrote:
> Hi all
>
> Have to agree with Lorna on these points. I would also add- while I
> think it would be the best solution to find a way to add technical
> format automatically, where this isn't possible, I do think it should
> be well within the skillset of a trained metadata creator to cope with
> this (and drop-down menus would help). Metadata creation and
> management occupies a space on the boundary of technical and
> non-technical, and cataloguers of non-book materials (as we so
> quaintly used to call them) have always had to create conformant
> metadata about technical aspects of resources.
>
> Best
> Sarah
>
> Lorna Campbell wrote:
>
>>> However, the issue that remains for us is that MIME types, however
>>> carefully explained/mapped or whatever, are just something that the
>>> non-technical cataloguer should not be exposed to IMHO,
>>
>>
>> I agree, but the same could probably be said for 90% of the LOM!
>>
>>> and at the end of the day I would rather remove this from our
>>> cataloguring interface altogether.
>>>
>>> I fully take the points from you and Charles that this is useful
>>> information, but it isn't useful if it is hard to capture,
>>
>>
>> Not sure I would agree with you on that point.
>>
>>> or wrongly filled in.
>>
>>
>> ... in which case it becomes a metadata quality control issue.
>>
>>>
>>> If someone does have a reliable automatic tool, that can discern what
>>> is educationally relevant from what is fluff, then I would love to
>>> hear about it.
>>
>>
>> This is unrealistic... an object that is "educationally relevant" in
>> one context may be quite irrelevant in another.
>>
>> My main concern with removing 4.1 from application profiles is that
>> you
>> also remove a relatively popular search option from users.
>>
>> Bye
>> Lorna
>>
>>>
>>> Nik
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Lorna Campbell wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi Andy,
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for your comments. It's probably worth reminding everyone at
>>>> this stage that the UK LOM Core is supposed to be based on common
>>>> practice so if the general consensus is that 4.1 should be optional
>>>> rather than mandatory then I'm happy to go with that. So please let
>>>> me
>>>> know what you think!!
>>>>
>>>> Personally I'm inclined to suggest that 4.1 should remain mandatory
>>>> for
>>>> the reasons below, however I'm open to persuasion!
>>>>
>>>>> 4.1 technical.format is currently mandatory in the UK LOM Core.
>>>>>
>>>>> In the RDN/LTSN partnership work there has been some discussion
>>>>> about
>>>>> the
>>>>> benefits of using technical.format vs. the cost of getting
>>>>> cataloguers
>>>>> to
>>>>> populate the field correctly.
>>>>>
>>>>> Most real-world resources (even Web pages) are made up of multiple
>>>>> objects, each having a different MIME type - therefore populating
>>>>> this
>>>>> field correctly is likely to be difficult in practice. Note: it
>>>>> might
>>>>> be
>>>>> possible to automatically populate this field -
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I would suggest that it would be preferable for this field to be
>>>> populated automatically but I realise that this may not always be
>>>> possible. If this field is to be populated manually, e.g. via a web
>>>> form, I would suggest that cataloguers are presented with a drop
>>>> down
>>>> list of terms which are mapped to underlying mime types e.g HTML web
>>>> page for text/html
>>>>
>>>>> but, if so, it's not clear
>>>>> to me why one would want to automatically populate the field at the
>>>>> time
>>>>> the resource is catalogued, as opposed to at some later point
>>>>> downstream,
>>>>> e.g. when the metadata is indexed or when resource is accessed.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> This is a very interesting issue... at what point should this
>>>> information be captured and at what point does the metadata instance
>>>> have to be "complete", at input, storage, access or transmission, in
>>>> order to "conform"? I'm inclined to think that to some extent this
>>>> is
>>>> a workflow issue. As a user I wouldn't care at what point this
>>>> information is captured just as long as it's there when I go
>>>> searching
>>>> for images for a learning object I'm building.
>>>>
>>>>> Additionally, it is not clear what end-user functional requirement
>>>>> is
>>>>> being met by populating the field.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> LOM states that "This data element shall be used to identify the
>>>> software needed to access the learning object" in reality though
>>>> this
>>>> element can also be used to provide the user with invaluable
>>>> information on what CanCore refer to as the "resource medium". This
>>>> is
>>>> particularly useful given that 5.2 Educational. Learning Resource
>>>> Type
>>>> is so problematic. One of the common criticisms of 5.2 is that not
>>>> only does the vocabulary mix up from and function, it is also
>>>> imprecise
>>>> when it comes to recording form. For example 5.2 Learning Resource
>>>> Type. Narrative Text could refer to an object that has the
>>>> Technical
>>>> format text/html (e.g. a transcript of the text of the Magna Carta)
>>>> or
>>>> image/jpeg (e.g. an image of the original Magna Carta document). It
>>>> may be very useful for an end user to distinguish between these two
>>>> quite distinct resources.
>>>>
>>>> Having said all that I'm willing to consider making 4.1 optional if
>>>> other implementors agree with Andy.
>>>>
>>>> Bye
>>>> Lorna
>>>>
>>>>> In practice, the more generalised information found in 4.6
>>>>> technical.otherPlatformRequirements is likely to be more useful to
>>>>> the
>>>>> end-user when discovering/selecting a resource. (For example - "I
>>>>> don't
>>>>> care whether the Web page contains GIF or JPEG images - all I want
>>>>> to
>>>>> know
>>>>> is whether I need anything more than my Web browser to use the
>>>>> resource").
>>>>>
>>>>> In maintaining/developing the RDN/LTSN LOM Application Profile I
>>>>> would
>>>>> like to consider making 4.1 technical.format optional - however, I
>>>>> can't
>>>>> currently do that and remain compliant with the UK LOM Core.
>>>>>
>>>>> On balance, I wonder if making 4.1 technical.format mandatory and
>>>>> 4.6
>>>>> technical.otherPlatformRequirements optional is the right way
>>>>> round?
>>>>> I'd
>>>>> appreciate other people's views on this - but would ultimately like
>>>>> to
>>>>> suggest that technical.format is made optional in UK LOM Core.
>>>>>
>>>>> Comments?
>>>>>
>>>>> Andy
>>>>> --
>>>>> Distributed Systems, UKOLN, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY, UK
>>>>> http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ukoln/staff/a.powell +44 1225 383933
>>>>> Resource Discovery Network http://www.rdn.ac.uk/
>>>>> ECDL 2004, Bath, UK - 12-17 Sept 2004 - http://www.ecdl2004.org/
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Lorna M. Campbell
>>>> Assistant Director
>>>> Centre for Educational Technology Interoperability Standards (CETIS)
>>>> Centre for Academic Practice, University of Strathclyde
>>>> +44 (0)141 548 3072
>>>> http://www.cetis.ac.uk/
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> --
>> Lorna M. Campbell
>> Assistant Director
>> Centre for Educational Technology Interoperability Standards (CETIS)
>> Centre for Academic Practice, University of Strathclyde
>> +44 (0)141 548 3072
>> http://www.cetis.ac.uk/
>>
>
> --
> *******************************************
> Ms. Sarah Currier
> Librarian, Stòr Cùram Project
> "A Storehouse of Learning Resources for Social Care"
> Dept. of Social Work, University of Strathclyde
> c/o: Centre for Academic Practice, University of Strathclyde
> Graham Hills Building, 50 George Street
> Glasgow G1 1QE, Scotland, United Kingdom
> Tel.: +44 (0)141 548 4573 Fax: +44 (0)141 553 2053
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> *******************************************
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