Application Profiles

1
Application Profiles interoperable friend or
foe? Rachel Heery Michael Day TEL Milestone
Conference Frankfurt am Main, 29-30 April 2002
2
Themes of the presentation

• Increase in schema creation activity
• Tension between differentiation and
  interoperability
• Counterbalances to proliferation of portals
• sharing schema
• regard for end-user requirements
• controlled evolution of vocabularies
• cross standard interoperability
• Rôle of information professionals ...

3
Definitions...
4
Definition of Element Set

• An element set is coherent bounded set of terms
  formulated as a basis for metadata creation
• Designed for particular purpose e.g.
  domain-specific, resource description, rights
• Identifies designated authority

5
Definition of Schema

• An schema is a structured representation that
  defines and identifies terms in an element set
• Provides authoritatve declaration of terms
• Indicates semantic relationship of terms
• Supports unique identification of terms
• Typically schema will be expressed on RDF or XML
  schema language

6
Definition of Application Profile

• An application profile is a schema which consists
  of terms (metadata elements) drawn from one or
  more element sets optimised for a particular
  local application
• Application profiles are declarations of usage
• Application profile reuse terms already defined
  elsewhere or use terms from a local element set

7

• Schema
• Declares set of terms with identifiers,
  definitions and comments
• Self reliant
• Means of declaring new terms

• Application profile schema
• Declares set of terms used in particular
  application or domain
• Optimised for that application or domain
• Re-uses terms from elsewhere
• Means of declaring terms that an application uses
  and understands

8
Increase in schema creation activity
9
Optimisation and adaptation

• MARC local fields
• 9XX and XX9 tags
• Z39.50 application profiles
• sub-sets of standard appropriate for application
  area
• IMS
• UK Further Education extension
• Dublin Core domain specific elements and
  qualifiers

10
New application profiles

• RSLP Collection Level description
• DC Government
• DC Libraries
• DC Education
• Australian Government Locator Service
• Food and Agricultural Organisation
• European Environment Agency
• Renardus
• EASEL,
• Schoolnet
• Various UK educational initiatives
• etc., etc.

11
Sharing schemas ...

• Standard solutions are published
• but
• Implementers adaptations/extensions are not made
  widely available
• Has this led to unnecessary proliferation of
  schemas, to duplication and repetition?

12
Characterising requirements

• Implementers need to declare various
  characteristics of their schema
• terms used
• whether a term is mandatory
• any refined definitions of terms from existing
  namespaces
• which schemes must be used for content
• other rules for content

13
How to share ...
14
Best practice for sharing schema

• "What terms does your metadata use?"
• Need to express in comparable way
• Which standard terms are used in an application
• How terms are adapted or used locally
• Other related usage notes

15
Registries of schemas

• To give access to schemas
• searching and browsing
• names, definitions, usage
• relationships between terms
• Support evolution of schemas
• top-down (standards authorities)
• bottom-up (real world usage)
• Disclosure, discovery, effective reuse,
  harmonisation

16
Publishing schemas and application profiles

• Why?
• To inform and promote
• To provide authoritative version
• To facilitate inter-working
• To support
• Evolution
• Alignment

17
Registries

• MetaForm at the State and University Library in
  Göttingen
• MEG registry serving UK Metadata for Education
  group
• SCHEMAS registry EC funded, serving European
  projects (soon to be CORES!)

• DCMI registry prototypes access to information
  on DCMI terms

18
Balancing standardisation and differentiation ...
19
Increase in schema creation activity

• Implementers must decide on appropriate metadata
  for a new service or system ... but what? Is
  there a single answer?
• Re-use
• Interoperability
• Users want coherent services
• But all want new, innovative services
• Tension between alignment and differentiation

20
Difficult issues!

• People are keen to reach consensus, but.
• Inconsistent approach in practice
• When should implementers create new terms?
• When should implementers try to add terms to
  existing element sets?
• Varying practice about creation of local element
  sets
• Messy issue of data models

21
Is a new DCMI term required?

• Based on Stuart Suttons Action Chart!
• When faced with requirement for schema
• Use existing single schema where possible
• else
• Will use of domain specific scheme meet
  requirement?
• else
• Will term from another schema meet requirement?
• else
• Will a new domain-specific qualifier meet
  practice?
• else
• Create local term?/Recommend schema extension?
• Then declare terms ...

22
Meeting user requirements..
23
Quality control

• How well does metadata meet needs of user?
• Needs to be awareness of quality and information
  retrieval issues in schema design
• Some suggested criteria
• effectiveness of retrieval
• effectiveness of display of retrieved record
• cost of metadata creation
• barriers to interoperability

24
Evolution of element sets
25
Managing evolution of element sets

• Ordered procedure for new terms
• approval process
• historical record of changes
• Top-down (committee structure) or bottom-up
  (feedback from usage statistics
• Possibilities for automation?
• Registration of new terms
• harvesting existing metadata

26
Cross standard interoperability
27
Collaboration between standardisation bodies

• acknowledging overlapping semantics
• honouring namespaces i.e. re-use elements from
  existing element sets
• reach consensus on core elements
• reach consensus on data models for declaring
  schema
• collaborate on registries
• This is the agenda of CORES project!

28
Information on standards

• Practitioners need accessible information
• Overviews of standards development
• Reviews of schema-creating activities
• Need information on inter-relation of standards
  in relation to schema e.g. Z39.50 attribute sets
  and DC schema
• Need commentary and guidance information

29
The rôle of the information professional?

• Tradition of collaboration within library world
• Ability to articulate needs of end-user
  communities
• Expertise in information retrieval techniques
• Ability to create user-friendly, accessible
  documentation
• Healthy scepticism of technology?

30
Can contribute to

• Lobbying for infrastructure for sharing schema,
  moving from projects to services
• Lobbying for tools
• Helping build tools
• Involvement in standardisation process
• Putting in quality control
• Considering costs, developing business models ...

31
Further reading

• Rachel Heery Manjula Patel, Application
  Profiles mixing and matching metadata schemas,
  Ariadne, 25, September 2000 http//www.ariadne.
  ac.uk/issue25/app-profiles/
• Thomas Baker, Makx Dekkers, Rachel Heery, Manjula
  Patel Gauri Salokhe, What terms does your
  metadata use? Application Profiles as
  machine-understandable narratives, Journal of
  Digital Information, 2 (2), November 2001
  http//jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/Articles/v02/i02/Baker
  /
• Heike Neuroth Traugott Koch, Metadata mapping
  and application profiles approaches to providing
  the cross-searching of heterogeneous resources in
  the EU project Renardus, Proceedings of DC-2001
  http//www.nii.ac.jp/dc2001/proceedings/
• SCHEMAS Registry http//www.schemas-forum.org/reg
  istry/
• DCMI Registry http//wip.dublincore.org8080/regi
  stry/Registry
• CORES http//www.cores-eu.net

32
Acknowledgements

• UKOLN is funded by Resource the Council for
  Museums, Archives and Libraries, the Joint
  Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the UK
  higher and further education funding councils, as
  well as by project funding from the JISC and the
  European Union. UKOLN also receives support from
  the University of Bath, where it is based.

http//www.ukoln.ac.uk/