Resource Discovery (metadata and searching)

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Resource Discovery(metadata and searching)

• Working Group Report

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Issues discussed

• What kinds of resources should EMELD provide
  search services for?
• What should the design be for an EMELD search
  interface?
• How can EMELD get good metadata into its search
  database?
• What level of metadata should be exposed?

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What resources?

• Anything that might be of value to the endangered
  language's linguist.
• Language data
• Tools
• Advice (including reviews)
• People
• "Gateway" websites

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What resources?

• But, there's no reason to rely on this working
  group for "what".
• A questionnaire distributed via Linguist

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What resources?

• Two kinds of best practice resources
• Resources with best practice metadata
• These resources can be discovered
• Non-digital resources encouraged
• Digital resources discouraged, but allowed

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What resources?

• Best practice digital resources
• All digital resources encouraged to be of this
  type
• Benefits
• Enhanced search features (due to document
  interoperability)
• Special "BP globe of approval"

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What resources?

• Side Note
• Best Practice "approval" system should be tied
  into a larger system through which digital
  resources could be listed as "publications"
• A topic for another working group? (Perhaps OLAC?)

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What resources?

• Issues which need to be addressed
• Metadata for resources interesting to linguists
  but which are not linguistic data
• Needed Best practice metadata standards for
• Tools
• Advice
• People
• ...
• Test EMELD could see how it would classify
  everything in BPU.

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How to search?

• Assumption Metadata and data is distributed
• Query Language
• Metadata OLAC standard
• Data from interoperable documents A new standard

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How to search?

• Resource Query Language Ideal
• A generalized query protocal used across the
  linguistics community
• A series of "methods" to be defined can be called
  on these resources to retrieve structured
  linguistic data matching query parameters

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How to search?

• Problems implementing ideal
• No clear sense as to what "methods" are needed.
• One solution Examine results from questionnaire

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How to search?

• Problems implementing ideal
• Very few repositories allow their data to be
  accessed in a generalized way
• First step Encourage documentation of repository
  data access systems and develop a metadata
  standard for this

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How to search?

• Long term implementation issues
• An OLAC Query Language Protocol
• A well-defined linguistic query language
• A system for "packaging" queries
• Linguistic data search registry
• Linguistic sites register they are data access
  sites
• They also register implemented search methods
• EMELD will archive best-practice documents for
  data access for data creators not capable of
  implementing the query protocol

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How to search?

• Pilot project
• Take some small subset of resources
• Data inputted via Field
• Nijmegen? SIL? AIATSIS? AILLA?
• Take FIELD search out of FIELD
• Search over that small set of resources
• Ideally, keep both resources in separate
  databases to begin to develop query interchange
  protocol

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How to search?

• Another project Grammatical thesaurus
• Develop a grammatical thesaurus that gives common
  synomyns for a given grammatical term (Ex. oral
  stop, plosive)
• This could then be used to allow a user's search
  to be expanded to include synonyms for a given
  term.
• In all likelihood, there are other applications
  of this.

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How to search?

• Search interface
• EMELD should implement a VISER-like service for
  access to its database
• There are two distinct kinds of searches
• Resource location
• Resource data search

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How to search?

• Search interface
• The details of the search interface implemented
  by EMELD are hard to conceive of until more
  resources can be accessed through it
• A questionnaire can help with this area too.
• EMELD could ask people to try the search and
  evaluate it
• Starting with the people in this room

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Getting the data

• Sticks
• EMELD Ambassadors
• Assisted by Linguist Spider

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Getting the data

• Carrots
• Support harvesting metadata in document headers
  for submitted URL's.
• Resources with best practice metadata can be
  referenced using some standard EMELD URI which
  can be used as a reference
• These resources could be posted and advertised
  on Linguist

(but consult Baden first)
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Getting the data

• Juiciest Carrots (Best Practice resources only)
• "Preferred" EMELD URI's
• Marked as such in a search
• Could undergo "advanced" search techniques
• Be peer-reviewed and vetted by LDRA

(Linguistic Digital Resource Association)
This organization does not exist, as far as I
know.
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Granularity

• Right now there are no recommendations for the
  granularity of exposed metadata records
• Large archives, for example, have hierarchical
  structure, one level of which must be isolated
  (the IMDI session, for example)
• Cutting-edge archives don't work well with the
  resourceobject model. Their resources are
  "created" based on the user's needs

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Granularity

• The lack of recommendations on this issue
  inhibits metadata creation
• Granularity makes a big difference as to what
  content is searchable
• Two different audience's in need of advice
• "Real" archives (a.k.a. trusted repositories)
• Individuals

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Granularity

• Recommendation EMELD should encourage IMDI and
  OLAC to devise best-practice recommendations for
  granularity

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The questionnaire

• Two broad kinds of questions
• What kinds of things would you like?
• What kinds of would you hate hate?

(Dafydd's Corollary)
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The questionnaire

• Part one Search capabilities
• How do you want to conduct your search
  (google-style, directory-style, pull-down
  menus...)?
• What kinds of searches are you doing already on
  other sites?
• Search within results? (We wanted this.)
• Thesaurus-based search

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The questionnaire

• Part Two Search content
• Free entry (like Google)
• Feature-based entry
• Statistical questions
• Phonetic characters
• Geographical search
• Time search
• ...

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The questionnaire

• Part Three Results
• Google-like results
• Journal abstract search-like results
• Restricted results (only return web sites, .pdf
  documents, ...)
• ...

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The questionnaire

• Format
• Online submission
• Combination multiple choice (for the uncreative)
  and free form (for the creative)
• Encourage people to envision the search of the
  year 2503