again, sorry for the delayed response.

On May 5, 2008, at 4:49 AM, Les Carr wrote:

> On 4 May 2008, at 21:06, Jewel Ward wrote:
>
> You indicate in your paper that further study should be directed at  
> the reasons for the missing DC terms - did you do any work on this?
>
No, I did not.  Although, the IMLS DCC project group, et al, looked  
into it and to heavily paraphrase, it looks like the missing DC terms  
relates to local metadata practices and mis-mapping of metadata. see:  
Jackson, et al, 2008 and Shreeves, 2005 at http://imlsdcc.grainger.uiuc.edu/about.asp#publications 
.

>> N. Dushay and D. Hillmann, "Analyzing Metadata for Effective Use  
>> and Re-use," DC-2003: 2003 Dublin Core Conference, Seattle,  
>> September 2003.
>> http://dc2003.ischool.washington.edu/Archive-03/03dushay.pdf
> This paper concentrates on a method of visualising metadata  
> encoding, rather than the metadata contents themselves.
>
True.  But if you look at section 3.1-3.4 you'll see examples of the  
metadata quality problems they found.

>> do i think the OAI-PMH framework or was dead?
> I wonder whether the question should be "Is OAI-PMH dead, or still  
> undergoing a very protracted labour?". OAI doesn't deliver metadata  
> magically (unless the metadata already exists, in which case it  
> certainly can't be blamed for any deficiencies!) and repositories  
> are still getting to grips with issues about metadata - what  
> metadata to collect, how to use it for in-house reports, how to  
> display it on repository pages etc. What OAI has done is to put  
> metadata on the agenda for a wider range of users, but "How To Share  
> It WIth Others" has become a non-issue when Google does all our  
> heavy lifting.
>
or, possibly, because of the work w/Linked Data? http://linkeddata.org/

>> the lack of shareable, quality metadata has been a barrier to using  
>> the framework to "its fullest extent", as the lack of quality  
>> metadata has limited the kinds/types/amounts of services that can  
>> be built on it.
> Or is it the other way around? It is difficult to create and  
> maintain a global information service! There's a lot of  
> infrastructure to get in place (e.g. reliable network crawling and  
> local storage) not to mention trying to find a sustainability  
> mechanism to keep it running for more than 2 years. Sure, dodgy  
> metadata doesn't make it any easier, but who is going to invest in  
> metadata improvements without payback for doing so?
>
True and true, below.
>
>
>>> Organisations do not (on the whole) implement PMH, any more than  
>>> they implement SMTP. They install an EPrints/DSpace/Fedora server  
>>> like they do an Exchange server. Their users might provide  
>>> unsatisfactory metadata, but then they might send unsatisfactory  
>>> email too :-)
>> whether or not one "implements" the OAI-PMH depends on what  
>> software you use; not everyone uses ePrints/DSpace/Fedora.
>> in which case, they "implement" the protocol b/c it is not built-in,
> You're right about my repository-facism. Please excuse me! But we  
> ought to check the figures - I was under the impression that most  
> people used a predefined OAI package for the development environment  
> of their choice.

Probably, but I really don't know who or where those figures might be.

Regards,

Jewel
--
Jewel Ward, Ph.D. Student
The School of Information and Library Science
Univ of North Carolina @ Chapel Hill