Increasing points of access – a guide to metadata harvesting

Open Access

MILE ConferenceLondonJanuary 28th 2009

A Picture’s Worth a Thousand Euros – Return on Investment?How to improve the cultural AND commercial potential of your image collection.

Niamh BrennanTrinity College Dublin

Garret McMahonTrinity College Dublin

Increasing points of access – a guide to metadata harvesting

MILE Conference, London January 2009

What’s the issue?

“Providing the public with digital access to a collection of images is a necessity, but simply publishing them online doesn't make them accessible…”- Charlotte Sexton, Deputy Head New Media, The National Gallery


Interoperability…

What’s the solution?

“… the ability of systems, services and organisations to work together seamlessly toward common or diverse goals”.


Interoperability for discovery of and access to images

Requires OPEN STANDARDS for both

1. Communication between systems (digital archives, repositories, etc.)

and

2. Description of resources and collections


OAI Metadata Harvesting – What is it?

• OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting) is a protocol developed by the Open Archives Initiative

• Based on standards that are Open and freely available

• Can support any metadata schema

• Can be incremental

• Supports federated discovery services based on aggregated and shared metadata





What are they using?

• Open Archives Initiative (standard) compliant repositories

• Agreed set of metadata

• OAI Harvester (+ validator, aggregator)

• Front end


OAI Harvesting: How it works


OAI Harvesting: How it works

OAI Harvester

Get

List


Discovery of, and access to, images across distributed digital libraries/archives can be achieved easily and cost-effectively

via metadata harvesting


Interoperability for discovery of and access to images

Requires OPEN STANDARDS for both

1. Communication between systems (digital archives, repositories, etc.)

and

2. Description of resources and collections


• Research publications

• Etheses

• Epublishing/Grey Literature

• Images









• Higher Education Authority -funded under Strategic Innovation Fund

• National Development Plan

• Research as critical to economic development

• National research profile

• Managed by the Irish Universities Association

IReL-Open Initiative



OAI Harvesting is not a panaceaOAI Harvesting is not a panacea

It needs help!It needs help!




MILE Conference, London January 2009Australian University Repository

Census (AUIRC) search

Australian Research Repositories Online to the World (ARROW) search

From: Sefton, Peter (2009) What the OAI-ORE protocol can do for you, [blog entry], PSetfton, 14/10/2008http://ptsefton.com/2008/10/14/what-the-oai-ore-protocol-

can-do-for-you.htm

http://ptsefton.com/2008/10/14/what-the-oai-ore-protocol-can-do-for-you.htm





Combined approach:

• Standardisation & mapping – agreement on same terms where possible

• Dumbing down & mapping – exposure of lowest common denominator terms only eg 1 date field only

• Normalisation at harvester end – harvester/validator automatically ‘understands’ and re-labels data


Agreement on a Core Set of Metadata Elements for harvesting

• Use Simple [i.e. unqualified] Dublin Core as the foundation for the Core Set

• Ensure that the Core Set adequately represents the essential fields covered by the major metadata schemas

• Keep the number of mandatory fields to a minimum• Map the corresponding element/s in richer metadata

schemas used locally to the elements in the Core Set• Expose only the elements corresponding to the Core Set

for harvesting• At the local level document the mapping [cross-walk] used

(eg. CDWAlite to Dublin Core, VRA Core to Dublin Core) and which elements are exposed for harvesting


Trintiy College Dublin VRA 3.0 to Qualified Dublin Core Crosswalk– page 1


VRA Core to IEEE LOM

VRA Core 3.0/4.0/IEEE LOM Crosswalk for UCD School of Architecture/National Digital Learning Repository (NDLR) harvest/bulk upload– Version 2.0 [NB/JC 2009]


Where is the Value?

• Maximum impact & exposure – works for commercial agencies and for publicly-funded institutions

• Lightweight, easy implementation

• Re-use of expensively created metadata for multiple purposes

• Local control /national, international, specialist applications


Interoperability…

What’s the solution?

“… the ability of systems, services and organisations to work together seamlessly toward common or diverse goals”.



MILE Conference, London January 2009• OPENING UP THE GATES OF KNOWLEDGE: A BEGINNERS GUIDE TO OAI-PMH , TrustDR Supporting Report , Version Control: V1 8/May/06Authors: David Dripps, John Casey & Jackie Proven http://trustdr.ulster.ac.uk/work_in_progress/supporting_reports/Opening_up_the%20Gates_OAI-PMH.php

• OAI for Beginners - the Open Archives Forum online tutorial http://www.oaforum.org/tutorial/

• National Library of Australia initiatives using the Open Archives Initiative protocol for metadata harvesting http://www.nla.gov.au/nla/staffpaper/2003/boston1.html#2a

• Dewatripont, M et al. (2006) Study on the economic and technical evolution of the scientific publication markets in Europe. Final Report. January 2006. DGResearch,European Commission. Available at: http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/pdf/scientific-publicationstudy_en.pdf

• Hegg, Kevin and Knab, Andreas. (2008) Interoperability: 2008 ARLIS/NA-VRA Summer Educational Institute, July 11, 2008 http://www.vraweb.org/seiweb/SEI2008_Presentations/SEI2008_Interoperability.ppt

• Baca, Murtha (2008) Using Metadata Schemas to Encode and Disseminate Information and Images, MILE Metadata Classification Conference ‘Semantics, Semiotics, and Structures’, London, 18 January 2008http://www.mileproject.eu/asset_arena/document/AL/[email protected]

• Baca, Murtha (2008) Creating Integrated Access to Collections On Line; Metadata Harvesting, MILE Metadata Classification Conference ‘Semantics, Semiotics, and Structures’, London, 18 January 2008 http://www.mileproject.eu/asset_arena/document/AL/[email protected]

• Digital Library Federation (2007) Best Practices for OAI Data Provider Implementations and Shareable Metadata: A joint initiative between the Digital Library Federation and the National Science Digital Library. http://webservices.itcs.umich.edu/mediawiki/oaibp/?TableOfContents

• Sefton, Peter (2009) What the OAI-ORE protocol can do for you, [blog entry], PSetfton, 14/10/2008http://ptsefton.com/2008/10/14/what-the-oai-ore-protocol-can-do-for-you.htm [ accessed 26/01/09

• DRIVER Guidelines Version 2.0 (2008): Guidelines for content providers - exposing textual resources with OAI-PMH, November 2008 http://www.driver-support.eu/documents/DRIVER_Guidelines_v2_Final_2008-11-13.pdf [ accessed 26/01/09 ]

• Arms, Caroline R. (2003) Available and useful: OAI at the Library of Congress in Library Hi Tech 21, (2), 2003, pp 129 - 139 http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/techdocs/libht2003.html [ accessed 26/01/09 ]

http://trustdr.ulster.ac.uk/work_in_progress/supporting_reports/Opening_up_the%20Gates_OAI-PMH.php

http://www.nla.gov.au/nla/staffpaper/2003/boston1.html#2a

Open Access Niamh BrennanTrinity College Dublin

Phone: +353 1 896 1646Email: [email protected]

Garret McMahonTrinity College Dublin

Phone: +353 1 896 1646Email: [email protected]