Metadata : Concentrating on the data, not on the scheme

1. Metadata : Concentrating on the data, not on the scheme Imma Subirats FAO of the United Nations Marcia Zeng Kent State University euroCRIS Meeting  Bologna (Italy) April 26-27, 2011

2. Agricultural Information Management Standards FAO AIMS http://aims.fao.org/

3. Outline • Background • The first step for contributing “LOD” • LODE Recommendations • LODE-BD introduction • The decision trees

4. Background

5. Linked Open Data Refers to a set of best practices for publishing, sharing, and interlinking structured data on the Web Key technologies • URIs for identifying entities or concepts in the world • RDF model for structuring and linking descriptions of things • HTTP for retrieving resources or descriptions of resources

6. Breaking Silos, Linking Data! Linking Open Data cloud diagram as of 2010-09, by Richard Cyganiak and Anja Jentzsch. http://lod-cloud.net/

7. Metadata Standards Guidelines and recommendations on what standards to follow and how to prepare LOD-ready metadata are essential • There is no one-size-fits-all approach • During the last two decades a great number of metadata-related standards have been created by different communities for specifics purposes. Decisions on what standard(s) to adopt will directly impact the degree of LOD-readiness of the bibliographic data

8. The first step for contributing to "LOD"

9. Data and service providers… …are likely to have specific questions about encoding strategies, such as: • What metadata standard(s) should be used? • What is the minimal set of properties meaningful in data sharing? • Is there any metadata model or application profile that can be reused or followed? • What kind of value should we exchange: the literal forms representing a concept or the URI identifying the concept ? • How should we encode our data?

10. LODE Recommendations LOD-Enabled

11. LOD-Enabled Objectives • To assist information professionals to decide what metadata terms to use when encoding existing bibliographic data • To provide a set of recommendations that will support the selection of appropriate encoding strategies for producing LOD-enabled data

12. LOD-Enabled 5 Principles • To promote the use of well-established metadata standards • To encourage the use of authority data, controlled vocabularies, and syntax encoding standards whenever possible • To encourage the use of resource URIs as names for things for data values when they are available • To facilitate the decision-making process regarding data encoding for the purpose of exchange and reuse • To provide a reference support that is open for suggestions of new properties and metadata terms

13. The LODE-Bibliographical Data (LODE-BD) LOD-Enabled BD

14. LODE-BD  • a reference tool in selecting appropriate encoding strategies • uses flowcharts to present individualized decision trees for metadata properties • aims to address two questions • how to encode bibliographic data for the purpose of exchanging data; and • how to encode these data as Linked Open Data (LOD) - enabled bibliographic data

15. Once a content provider has decided to publish a bibliographical database as Linked Open Data…. LOD-Enabled BD

16. Thema What kinds of entities and relationships are involved in bibliographic resource description? Resource Agent

18. What properties should be considered for publishing meaningful/useful LOD-ready bibliographic data? 1. Title Information 2. Responsible Body 3. Physical Characteristics 4. Location 5. Subject 6. Description of content 7. Intellectual property 8. Usage 9. Relation between documents / agents

20. What metadata standards should be used for preparing LOD-ready metadata? A selected widely-used metadata standards and the emerging LOD-enabled vocabularies dc:Dublin Core Metadata Element Set dcterms: DCMI Metadata Terms bibo: Bibliographic Ontology agls:AGLS Metadata Standard (Australian Government Locator Service) ags:AgMES (Agricultural Metadata Element set) eprint:Eprints Terms, UKOLN marcrel: MARC List for Relators

21. What metadata terms are appropriate in any given property for publishing LOD-ready metadata based on a local database? 

22. Decision Trees LOD-Enabled BD

23. LOD-Enabled BD Decision Trees • Assisting in the metadata term selection process • Flowcharts to present individualized decision trees for the properties included in each of the nine groups • Starting from the property that describes a resource instance, each flowchart presents decision points and gives a step-by-step solution to a given problem of metadata encoding • designed to facilitate the selection of the appropriate strategies adjustable to data providers according to their situations

24. LOD-Enabled BD Decision Trees • At the end of each flowchart there are alternative sets of metadata terms for selection • Each chart is followed by the text-based explanations corresponding to the flowchart, with notes, steps, and examples whenever necessary in the tables

25. Decision Trees Subject

26. Decision Trees Responsible Body. Creator

27. LOD-Enabled BD Step Forward References and Links • How to publish and consume Linked Data • Where to find Linked Data sets and Vocabularies • How to express metadata with different syntaxes: text, html, xml, rdf, and rdfa • Why publish bibliographic data as Linked Data

28. http://aims.fao.org/lode/bd/ The AIMS Team euroCRIS Meeting  Bologna (Italy) April 26-27, 2011