Andy,
You are right in one sense of course. The reason I mentioned
PictureAustralia is because *every* record contains a link to a
resource. In catalogues the opposite is true. But perhaps that is
historical and will change.
As to whether metadata is content, I merely provide here the latest
reference which states that: "A bibliographic surrogate can also be
considered content". Section 3.2.1 in The Final Report for the AMeGA
(Automatic Metadata Generation Applications) Project
www.nsf.gov/nsb/meetings/2005/LLDDC_draftreport.pdf
In our current Australian higher education sector projects implementing
institutional repositories, eg., ARROW www.arrow.edu.au it is becoming
clear that research content may not necessarily be hosted in the
purpose-built repository. The FEDORA architecture (and many others) will
allow links with metadata. The content may just be somewhere on a
university's Web site.
For nomenclature, the term 'digital archive' seems to convey the best
understood meaning when we talk about what the ARROW project will be
creating. 'Digital' to indicate not physical, but the term 'archive'
doesn't seem to be misconstrued. 'Repository' in the other hand, is.
So, if metadata and links are content, then they form a repository.
OAIster of course is larger still.
Cheers,
Debbie
Debbie Campbell
Director, Coordination Support Branch
National Library of Australia
Parkes Place
Canberra ACT 2600
Australia
em: [log in to unmask]; ph: +61 2 6262 1673; fx: +61 2 6273 2545
Australia's Research Online www.arrow.edu.au
-
There are some differences though...
Google doesn't badge itself as a 'registry' - a term which would, I
assume, leave most real end-users scratching their heads? Now,
depending
on who the end-users of this 'registry' are intended to be, this may not
matter - since the intended users may understand completely what a
registry is in this context? Though, even from my perspective, I'm
confused about why this is called a registry rather than a search
engine?
The point is that the simplicity of Google is not just in the way the
interface is presented (the HTML, etc.) - the whole concept is very
simple
and intuitive. Even people who are new to the Web very quickly
understand
what it is that Google does for them.
As an aside, I wonder if we have similar problems with the word
'repository'? We all use the word repository in a semi-technical sense
amoungst ourselves - though, as I hinted in my response to Debbie, we
can
still argue about whether a 'repository of metadata records' is really
just a 'catalogue'?! But somehow that term also leaks out into our
conversations with end-users. So we go and talk to our academics or
computing service staff about setting up a 'institutional repository'
when
the words they really want to hear are 'content management system' or
even
just 'database'. Again, I wonder if some of them leave scratching their
heads and wondering what on earth we're on about. I assume that this
was
the thrust behind the recent request for clarification about the various
different names for repository-like objects that we now use? But
anyway, I digress...
|