Hi Deborah,

I'd have responded to your post sooner but I'm in the process of 
completing a long overdue paper for the Digital Curation Centre on this 
very topic! :-}

As Fred suggested, if you are looking for a metadata schema designed to 
describe teaching and learning resources then the best place to start 
is with the UK LOM Core.  The UK LOM Core is an application of the IEEE 
Learning Object Metadata Standard designed to meet the specific 
requirements of the UK educational community. The profile has been 
developed by CETIS and is supported by UKOLN, Becta and Learning and 
Teaching Scotland.

As Fred noted, the UK LOM Core currently exists in draft format, 
however we hope to progress it to a final version sometime this year.  
If you are interested in implementing the UK LOM Core then I suggest 
you use the working draft UK LOM Core 0.3_1204 which you can download 
from http://www.cetis.ac.uk/profiles/uklomcore/wip/

The profile itself consists of two components:

1) A minimum required Core Element Set which has been designed to 
facilitate basic interoperability.  Most implementers tend add extra 
LOM elements to this Core Element Set as it accommodates only the most 
basic information.  You'll be glad to hear that the Core Element Set 
consists of 18 simple data elements, as opposed to 60 which is closer 
to the number of elements in the LOM standard as a whole :-} Of these 
18 simple data elements approximately half of them (identifiers, dates, 
etc) should  be automatically generated and half need to be authored by 
hand.

2) Implementation Guidelines and Element Requirements - guidelines are 
provided on implementing every single element in the IEEE LOM Standard 
to try ensure that they are used with some consistency across the UK.  
Many of these guidelines are lifted directly from the Can Core 
Guidelines that Fred mentioned but some are tailored specifically to 
the UK sector.

Hope this helps, if you need any further information regarding the UK 
LOM Core or metadata in general, please don't hesitate to ask.

Best Wishes
Lorna

PS. Apologies for the broken link to the Metadata FAQ, I reported this 
last week and our horribly overworked techies are on the case :-}


On 24 Jan 2006, at 15:57, Fred Riley wrote:

> Deborah
>
> We don't have a repository up and running as yet, although I'm 
> currently developing a small-scale local LO database, but we've been 
> planning and thinking about this on and off for some time. The default 
> metadata schema for learning objects appears to be the UK LOM Core 
> (http://www.cetis.ac.uk/profiles/uklomcore), still at version 0.2 but 
> being worked on feverishly going by the occasional eruptions of 
> activity on this list. It's the schema being used by JORUM 
> (www.jorum.ac.uk). The spec document is a bit dry and aimed at 
> professional cataloguers from what I can see, but as the LOM is, I 
> believe, closely descended from CanCore you could use some of the 
> user-friendly guidelines on that site 
> (http://www.cancore.ca/en/guidelines.html). The Higher Education 
> Academy (nee LTSN) uses an application profile of CanCore/UK LOM 
> Core/IEEE LOM (I don't know which) called RLLOMAP and there are 
> user-friendly cataloguing guidelines online at 
> http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/interoperability.htm
>
> Of course you don't have to go for a LOM to tag your objects - you 
> could stick to a simple schema such as Dublin Core, but the trouble 
> with that is that DC doesn't have any fields describing educational 
> data.
>
> I would suggest looking at the educational metadata FAQ at CETIS 
> (http://www.cetis.ac.uk/metadatafaq/FrontPage)  but the link is kaput, 
> so perhaps one of the CETIS folk on here could have a look at it?
>
> As for developing a repository from scratch, that could be a Herculean 
> task if you're going to make it compliant with a LOM. It's something I 
> did think about, but knocked on the head after I saw the 60-odd fields 
> in the UK LOM Core. It might be better, if you've got the money, to 
> get server-based software such as the ubiquitous Intralibrary which 
> costs 5 figures but can, so I've heard, do anything that you might 
> want to do with a LO repository. The CETL I'm involved in 
> (www.rlo-cetl.ac.uk) will likely be getting a copy of Intralibrary to 
> host and tag its outputs.
>
>> From what I've read and heard, I think you've more chance of getting 
>> hamsters to roll boulders than of getting academics to input detailed 
>> metadata, a job which, IMO, is best left to professional cataloguers 
>> and librarians for a whole bunch of reasons, not least time and 
>> quality of metadata. This is certainly the approach that JORUM is 
>> taking, engaging piecework cataloguers to tag LOs as they're 
>> deposited - contact the JORUM folk for more details.
>
> Cheers
>
> Fred
>
> Fred Riley
> Learning Technologist
> Room C57, School of Nursing
> University of Nottingham
> Queen's Medical Centre
> Nottingham NG7 2HA
>
> Tel: +44 (0)115 82 30935
> http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/nursing/staff/support-staff/fred_riley.html
>
>>>> Deborah Ann Pratt <[log in to unmask]> 23/01/2006 16:19:02 >>>
> Hi everyone,
>
> I am involved with developing an online repository of learning objects
> for use in the Business and Management subject area as part of a HEFCE
> (Higher Education Funding Council for England) funded project. We are
> currently at the development stage and as part of the repository there
> will be metadata on the materials. I have been searching the literature
> regarding metadata - can someone point me in the right direction as to
> the metadata guidelines that we could use. What have others used? We
> would like if possible - to keep the metadata relatively simple as
> academics will be responsible for completing this.
>
> I would welcome any comments.
>
> Deborah.
>
>
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>

--
Lorna M. Campbell
Assistant Director, CETIS
University of Strathclyde
+44 (0)141 548 3072
http://www.cetis.ac.uk/