Joan
it's worth being explicit in response to this.
The sort of solution we're talking about (regardless of technology,
vendor, etc) is one where the underlying data are made far more
accessible than they are at present.
Given legal obligations, public sector role, and our wish to educate,
inform and entertain, that has to be a good thing.
HOWEVER, the solution we're discussing is also one where the data
curator (you lot) actually has to fill in FEWER forms and send data
to FEWER places. Instead, you provide the data ONCE (or a number
approaching once, more likely - at least to begin with) and all the
third parties that want it come along and take it to begin their
process of disseminating and adding value.
The 'place' to which you provide the data may be a page on your own
website, marked up with XML in such a way as to make it easily
parseable by a machine, or the 'place' might be an externally hosted
service such as that Jon's been describing from the 24 Hour Museum.
If the former, then there's a role for some intermediary between you
and all those third parties out there, whose job it would be to
gather data from all of the formatted pages like yours, and deliver a
block of data for the sector to any third parties who want it.
Your data gets greater visibility. You need to do less. If any piece
of information changes, you change it ONCE, and that change is then
disseminated to those making use of your data. They might use RSS
feeds as Jon suggested. They might use the Open Archives Initiative
(OAI) Protocol for Metadata Harvesting. Both have mechanisms to allow
a machine to check for - and grab - changed data periodically. They
might use something else with similar functionality. We'd simply
include something in the terms and conditions for accessing the feed
that required those using it in their own applications/services to
check for updates at least every n days...
Does that help?
Paul
On Tue 24 May, at 11:21, joan unwin wrote:
> hello, I have just seen this ongoing discussion. Obviously it is a
> good idea to
> let as many people know of our museum and its contents. My problem
> would be -
> if there is all this transferring data around - who keeps it up to
> date? I
> have enough trouble maintaining my own site, but would I then be
> responsible
> for updating the material on other websites, or would they have the
> responsibility?
> I apologise if this has already been discussed. I missed the first
> part of the
> discussions.
> Joan Unwin
>
>
> Dr Joan Unwin,
> The Hawley Collection,
> ARCUS, University of Sheffield,
> Westcourt,
> 2 Mappin Street,
> Sheffield, S1 4DT,
> England
>
> Telephone (0)114 222 7100
> http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/uni/projects/hp
>
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