Hi Pete,
> Hmmm, I'm not quite sure about the distinction being made here between
> "provision" and "exchange": the point of one service "providing"
> metadata is to enable another service to consume/use it.
Sorry, I should have clarified this. I took "provision" to mean
providing values for elements, rather than providing instances to be
consumed by other services.
> But yes, something I was turning over after reading Andy's initial
> message on this thread (and which I think is also touched on in John
> Casey's comment about a repository requiring the "full monty" and Scott
> Wilson's comment on "prior agreement" about data exchanged between
> services) is whether there is a potential tension here between the
> requirements/preferences of a (in OAI-PMH terms) "data provider" (the
> agent who provides/exposes metadata) - "you can't really expect me to
> provide *all* this stuff!" - and those of a "service provider" that
> uses
> that metadata as the basis of a new service - "I'd really quite like to
> rely on having present all those elements that UK LOM Core says is
> mandatory".
>
> I don't have an answer for how to resolve that tension! ;-)
I guess the answer is to migrate to the RDF type approach to metadata
that Andy initially described! However in the meantime we need a
solution / compromise for the current LOM world :-}
> As an aside, I tend to see LOM Application Profiles (and indeed
> metadata
> application profiles more generally) as specifications for metadata
> which is exposed by/exchanged between/consumed by services - _not_ for
> how the metadata is managed internally to an application. Those two
> things may be quite similar, but they may be quite different - a
> service
> provider is not really interested in whether the content/value of any
> individual data element is generated on the fly by a data provider's
> software or whether it's been created by a human metadata author.
Absolutely agree with you!
Lorna
--
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/
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