Hi Sarah,
Andy is right in that the approach you take should be dictated by the
requirements of your project. In the interests of interoperability
though I would advise that you allocate identifiers to both the object
and the metadata describing the object. If both the object and the
metadata associated with it have the same identifier then it will be
difficult to disaggreagate the two should you ever want to store them
separately. However Andy is also right that these identifiers should
be generated by your repository so this isn't something you should have
to worry about too much - hopefully!
Bye
Lorna
On 23 Jun 2005, at 16:49, Sarah Currier wrote:
> Thanks for this Andy, this was exactly the reply I was hoping for to
> clarify matters (although I'm also hoping to get a few more "what
> we're doing in practice" replies off-list- I've had two already).
>
> My situation is that I'm finalising application profile and other
> requirements for our repository providers, and I need to know what to
> tell the repository developers to do. You're correct that, once
> decided, it won't mean any extra work- but we DO already have about
> 100 LOs in the repository with their OAI identifiers in the LOM 1.1
> field. I would like to make the correct decision now; I'm leaving once
> the project becomes a service after August, and I'd like to leave
> everything as solid and well-grounded as possible for my successor who
> won't have much time for the repository.
>
> Thanks again.
>
> Sarah
>
> Andy Powell wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 23 Jun 2005, Sarah Currier wrote:
>>
>>> Dear all,
>>>
>>> So sorry to bring up the dreaded topic of identifiers again, but we
>>> are presently deciding whether to just use an identifier for our LOs
>>> (LOM element 1.1) or to also use an identifier for the metadata
>>> record as well (LOM element 3.1) as well. If we are going to conform
>>> to the UK LOM Core we must have both, and I understand why
>>> theoretically both are needed. But I'm not sure on a practical level
>>> whether both are needed at this point in history, with the absence
>>> of truly globally unique identifiers for LOs. I've seen a few
>>> application profiles which suggest that metadata record identifiers
>>> are optional (presumably so that imported records can be
>>> accommodated?) rather than mandatory.
>>>
>>> At the moment our repository is automatically generating an
>>> identifier for the LO for LOM element 1.1, which I'm told may be
>>> used for OAI harvesting of our records. If this is the case I'm not
>>> sure whether we also need a metadata record identifier in 3.1.
>>
>>
>> That doesn't sound quite right to me. The identifier used in the OAI
>> protocol is an identifier for what the protocol calls the 'item',
>> which normally corresponds to the metadata record (or more properly,
>> to the set of metadata records that the repository is able to expose
>> about the LO).
>>
>> In terms of the OAI protocol, the identifier for the object itself
>> (the LO) is different.
>>
>> So, LOM 3.1 corresponds to the OAI item identifier and LOM 1.1 is the
>> identifier of the LO. And the two identifiers should be different.
>>
>> As to your real question... which I think is "do I really need to
>> record the metadata identifier in 3.1?", I don't know. To a certain
>> extent, the answer will be driven by your own functional
>> requirements. My somewhat simplistic answer would be that your
>> repository should be managing these things for you anyway, and
>> therefore there should be no actual cost to you (in terms of effort)
>> to add them to the metadata! But I appreciate that that may not
>> actually be the case in practice.
>>
>> Andy
>> --
>> Distributed Systems, UKOLN, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY, UK
>> http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ukoln/staff/a.powell
>> tel: +44 1225 383933 msn: [log in to unmask]
>> Resource Discovery Network http://www.rdn.ac.uk/
>>
>>
>
> --
> *******************************************
> Ms. Sarah Currier
> Librarian, Stòr Cùram Project
> "A Storehouse of Learning Resources for Social Care"
> Dept. of Social Work, University of Strathclyde
> c/o: Centre for Academic Practice, University of Strathclyde
> Graham Hills Building, 50 George Street
> Glasgow G1 1QE, Scotland, United Kingdom
> Web: http://www.storcuram.ac.uk/
> Tel.: +44 (0)141 548 4573 Fax: +44 (0)141 553 2053
> E-mail: [log in to unmask] Mob.: +44 (0)7980 855 801
> Stòr Cùram is Gaelic for Storehouse of Care
> *******************************************
>
--
Lorna M. Campbell
Assistant Director, CETIS
University of Strathclyde
+44 (0)141 548 3072
http://www.cetis.ac.uk/
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