[Initial summary from Phil, with some editing/expansion by me!]
*UK LOM Core, mandatory elements (summary)*
The following is a summary of discussion on the CETIS-Metadata list, and
will hopefully serve as the agreed starting point for further discussion
at the UK LOM Core meeting in Glasgow.
The archives of the original discussion can be found at
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/cetis-metadata.html (the discussion took
place in July).
*Position in UK LOM Core draft 2*
18 simple data elements are mandatory:
1. General: identifier (catalog & entry), title, language, description.
2. Lifecycle: contribute (role, entity, date).
3. Meta-metadata: identifier (catalog & entry), contribute (role,
entity, date), schema, language.
4. Technical: location.
6. Rights: copyright and other restrictions, description.
*Issue Description*
Andy Powell (on Fri 9 Jul at 16:32 subject: UK LOM Core: mandatory
elements) wrote:
"My feeling is that UK LOM Core has a major problem with the way it
mandates so many elements."
"In summary, conformance with UK LOM Core should tell you more about how
particular elements and values have been used than about which set of
elements to expect in a record."
He suggested this arose from a view that metadata records were discrete
and complete, and that this was not the only view and gave an example
scenario where this was not the case.
[Lorcan Dempsey expanded on this view by citing a recent paper on
"Metadata Augmentation" the abstract of which says "The key to this
augmentation process involves changing the basic metadata unit from
"record" to "statement."
http://metamanagement.comm.nsdl.org/Metadata_Augmentation--DC2004.html]
Andy continued:
"I think that it would be more helpful to allow these services to claim
compliance with the UK LOM Core, even though they each only contain
partial information. It somehow feels wrong, or at least I don't
understand what we achieve, by saying that the individual services are
not complient."
"The other argument against making so many elements mandatory is that
for all elements (with the possible exceptions of the identifiers) there
will be some scenarios in which the element has no valid value."
Andy suggested only 1.1 general.identifier and 3.1
metametadata.identifier should (possibly) be mandatory.
There was a lot of debate on this. One issue which arose from this was
that of "what is the UK LOM Core for". See Phil's separate message
yesterday, but perhaps worth noting in particular:
Andy Powell (on Wed, 14 Jul at 16:16, subject Re: UK LOM Core:
mandatory elements):
"I still think we need to ask oursleves questions like 'What is the
purpose of an application profile?', 'What does XML Schema already give
us that we don't need to replicate in the application profile?', 'What
does mandatory mean?' and 'What are the benefits and downsides of making
particular elements mandatory or not?'.
Scott Wilson (on Fri, 16 Jul at 13:18 subject Re: UK LOM Core: mandatory
elements) wrote that
"It all comes down to purpose..."
"Clearly the 4-item and even 18-item sets will not support adaptive
real-time use, as in typical SCORM/just-in-time training scenarios,
where objects are discovered and used without necessarily any
intermediary selecting or modifying the materials. So I wouldn't be able
to use such objects in that sort of scenario."
"The more minimal set, like DC, looks more fit for purpose for
preemptive discovery of materials for hand-assembly into courses, where
there is a technical expert on hand to establish (by trial and error)
whether they will "play" in the local environment."
"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?"
On the one hand arguments were made that the UK LOM Core should be
sufficiently flexible to support a range of practice by metadata
creators/providers and that its primary purpose should be to encourage
consistency in the choice of metadata elements and particularly in the
values provided, in the interests of semantic interoperability.
On the other hand, there was concern that those searching for resources
were provided with enough metadata to meet their needs.
The summaries below don't represent every contribution, and are grouped
for / against rather than chronologically (some posts raised points for
and against).
Andrew Middleton (on Tue, 13 Jul at 11:18 subject Re: UK LOM Core:
mandatory elements) wrote:
"A metadata record is best completed by several people. But that means
records are left hanging (indefinitely?), and so not
compliant, until all quality inputters have done their bit.
...
At the moment the onus tends to be on one person to do the metadata. As
a consequence, depending on who does it, some elements are of a high
quality while others are not and so the metadata record, and purpose,
suffers."
Fred Riley (on Mon, 12 Jul at 11:39 subject Re: UK LOM Core: mandatory
elements) wrote that
-he was worried about how the project he was working on could provide
all the mandated metadata
-thought that if there is a problem filling in a mandatory field then
the result might be nonsense.
Andy Powell (on Wed, 14 Jul at 16:16, subject Re: UK LOM Core:
mandatory elements) suggested that it was important to know what
cataloguing rules were used to provide values for the elements that are
provided. In summary he wrote:
"My personal opinion is that the real benefit of something like UK LOM
Core is in achieving greater (but not 100%) consistency in the choice of
metadata elements and the way values are constructed for those elements
across a range of disperate data providers - not about telling consumers
of metadata records from those services which elements will absolutely,
definately be available."
"If my application absolutely needs 4.2 technical.size in order to
function properly, then I can simply throw any records without that
element away. I don't need an application profile to enable me to do
that - I just do it, having looked at each record. But I do need the
application profile in order to make sure that everyone constructs the
value in the same way."
Andy Powell (on Sat, 8 Aug at 22.51, subject: Re: UK LOM Core: what is
it for (was Re: UK LOM Core: mandatory elements))
"My concern is that by *mandating* things you may actually end up
reducing the level of 'meangingful exchange' by forcing people to supply
a value where none exists, or where the value is unknown."
"To maximise the level of 'meaningful exchange' we may find it is better
to
- strongly encourage the use of a particular set of elements
- strongly encourage (or perhaps even mandate) a particular set of rules
for formulating the values of those elements (cataloguing guidelines)
- but ultimately leave enough flexibility that people can decide when
it is appropriate to use an element and when it is inappropriate."
Phil Barker (on Tue 13 Jul at 15:42, subject Re: UK LOM Core: mandatory
elements) wrote:
"We want to provide teachers and learners with enough information to
locate appropriate learning resources"
John Casey (on Mon 12 Jul at 15:48, subject FW: UK LOM Core: mandatory
elements) wrote:
"Andy's ideas for a kind of distributed metadata record (I hope I have
got that right) has a lot of attraction (especially the idea about the
annotations service which we are interested in here) but I think for the
people running large repositories like JORUM etc they will require the
'full monty' of metadata at the time of deposit"
Scott Wilson (on Tue 13 Jul at 11:59, subject Re: UK LOM Core: mandatory
elements) distinguished between permitting partial records within a
workflow and exposing those exposing them to external systems:
"If you need to support fragmentary records (that is, with missing
mandatory data) internally within a workflow, that isn't an
interoperability issue - but you don't want to be sending such records
to external targets without prior agreement, or you should expect to
have those records rejected as being incomplete."
Pete Johnston (on Wed 14 Jul at 13:55, subject Re: UK LOM Core:
mandatory elements) wrote:
"The distributed/multi-part approach ... leaves the service provider
with the question of how they can be sure that the sum of however many
parts they gather will provide the minimum data they are depending on to
provide a service"
Phil Barker (on Tue 13 Jul at 15:42, subject Re: UK LOM Core: mandatory
elements) introduced the idea of multiple levels of conformance to UK
LOM Core.
Andrew Middleton (on Wed, 14 Jul at 15:09, subject Re: UK LOM Core:
mandatory elements) wrote:
[Based on WAI levels of compliance] "having 'optional' levels of
compliance in effect means there is a great tendency amongst academic
staff and support staff to work to the lowest level."
Also, several people commented along the lines of "if it isn't mandatory
then it won't be filled in", and it was noted that to a software
application conditions such as "strongly encouraged" and "recommended"
were the same as "optional".
*Routes to Resolution?*
Clarify what we want to acheive with the UK LOM Core and how we want to
see it used.
Consider distinguishing between
- complying with the requirement for elements in the UK LOM Core to be
present; and
- complying with the definitions / guidelines for providing values in
the UK LOM Core
(we could call the second type of compliance "UK LOM element usage" or
similar.)
Consider compliance at different levels:
level 1 compliance could be as Andy suggests with 2 mandatory elements,
everything else would be highly desirable, desirable or optional;
level 2 would make the highly desirable elements mandatory (and the
desirable would be highly desirable?);
level 3 would be as we have now.
Other suggestions?
Phil.
--
Phil Barker Learning Technology Adviser
ICBL, School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences
Mountbatten Building, Heriot-Watt University,
Edinburgh, EH14 4AS
Tel: 0131 451 3278 Fax: 0131 451 3327
Web: http://www.icbl.hw.ac.uk/~philb/
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