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
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