Hi there,

How come you guys always answer one question with another question??!

Ok, what's it for?  I said that the aim of UK LOM Core was to facilitate basic
interoperability but as Phil pointed out if that was simply the case we could
just point to CanCore :-)

Scott said:
>Of course, is this a minimal set that should be supported as a search index
>for interoperable search? Or is it disconnected from search functions, and
>is about usage hints to a delivery process? Or is it both, everything, or
>nothing??

I think part of the problem is that the UK LOM Core is trying to be
everything :-}  I also think the fact that the core  started out as a rather
ad hoc development is starting to tell.  We started of by assessing common
practice and then created a profile on the basis of this common practice.
What we didn't do was formally gather requirements and use cases.  Use cases
might help us to answer some of the questions we're struggling with now.

When Gerry and I wrote the first draft of the profile is was based on a
comparison of about a dozen existing profiles, including SCORM, which Scot
mentioned.  We wanted to see if there was any commonality in the elements that
other profiles used and, if so, to recommend the use of these elements to
the UK educational community.  The type of scenario we had in mind was that a
teacher searching any  repository would know that there would always be a
minimum set of factors that they can search for (title, contributor, language,
rights). At the same time if two applications (e.g. a local repository and a
national hub) are exchanging metadata instances then there will be a common
set of elements that each application will recognise regardless of extensions,
customised elements & vocabularies etc. We also wanted to ensure that all of
the recently funded X4L project would use a common set of elements.

This doesn't really answer the questions raised by Phil and Scott but
hopefully it'll help clarify the origins of the profile.  Where do we go from
here though??

Bye
Lorna

On 16 Jul 2004, at 12:31, Phil Barker wrote:

Lorna M. Campbell wrote:


> If we were to keep a mandatory element set, ideally what should this
> core consist of?
>
That depends what the UK LOM Core is for! If it aims to promote
interoperability, then it is enough for it to work on an
element-by-element level providing definitions and vocabularies suitable
for UK use. It'll be a small document I guess, saying use CanCore with
these changes.

If it aims to promote the creation/supply of enough metadata to satisfy
the needs of Learning Resource users, then I think the current core
might be justified. (Although we need to make sure that we don't limit
the way the metadata creation process is managed in such a way that
inhibits practices aimed at improving the quality of the metadata produce).

It's because I believe there needs to be a broader aim than just
swapping bits of metadata (a metadatum anyone?) that I think that the
WAI model is worth considering (and perhaps rejecting).

Phil


--
Phil Barker                            Learning Technology Adviser
      ICBL, School of Mathematics and Computer Science
      Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, EH14 4AS
      Tel: work - 0131 451 3278    home - 0131 221 1352
      Web: http://www.icbl.hw.ac.uk/~philb/

--
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/