IMLS NLG Collection Registry

1
IMLS NLG Collection Registry Item-Level
Metadata Repository at the University of Illinois

• Timothy W. Cole (t-cole3_at_uiuc.edu)Mathematics
  Librarian Professor of Library
  AdministrationUniversity of Illinois at
  Urbana-Champaign (USA)
• Open Archives Forum WorkshopUniversity of Bath4
  September 2003
• http//dli.grainger.uiuc.edu/Publications/TWCole/O
  AForumWkshpBath/

2
IMLS NLG Program

• Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)
• U.S. Federal grant-making agency, est. 1996
• Goal to foster leadership, innovation, lifetime
  learning
• 244 million annual budget
• IMLS National Leadership Grant Program
• Currently about 20 million per year
• Library, Museum, Library-Museum Collaborations
• Funds research demonstration, digitization,
  preservation, model programs, new technology

3
IMLS Digital Collections Framework

• IMLS Framework of Guidance for Building Good
  Digital Collections published November 2001
• http//www.imls.gov/pubs/forumframework.htm
• Product of 8-member IMLS Digital Library Forum,
  with participation from National Science Digital
  Library (NSF)
• Differentiates digital collections digital
  libraries
• Articulates principles frames discussion of
  best practices
• Links to resources, models, exemplary projects
• Will be sustained by National Information
  Standards Org.

4
Recommendations from the IMLS Forum

• Four General Recommendations to IMLS
• Digital collections built with support of public
  funds can and should be held to standards that
  support interoperability, reusability, and
  persistence.
• IMLS should maintain its own registry of funded
  digital collections.
• Because so much of the IMLS constituency consists
  of small and medium-sized organizations without
  sophisticated in-house technical support, the
  IMLS should also consider projects to develop
  infrastructure services that lower barriers to
  NSDL contribution by smaller organizations.
• IMLS should encourage the integration of an
  archiving component into every project plan by
  requiring a description of how data will be
  preserved.

5

• Collection description and registry for National
  Leadership grant projects with digital content
• Enhance discoverability all registry fields
  searchable
• Item level metadata repository via OAI-PMH
• Demonstrate potential of metadata for
  interoperability
• Facilitate reuse of information resources
• Research questionHow can resource developers
  best represent collections and items to meet the
  needs of service providers and end users?
• Project Website http//imlsdcc.grainger.uiuc.edu/
  

6
Project Scope

• 95 NLG projects with associated digital
  collections
• 51 of these are/were collaborative projects
• All together 237 institutions involved

7
A Diverse Community

• Wide variation in technical skills and technology
  infrastructure policy
• Mix of library, museum, and archive traditions
• Diverse perspectives on IP policy, use and
  presentation of metadata and primary resources
• Diverse embedded knowledge structures
• Wide range of vocabularies and descriptive
  practices
• Metadata created for diverse purposes
• Local vocabularies for type, subject, coverage,
  audience
• Wide range of granularity

8
Prior Work Mellon OAI Grants

• July 2001, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded 7
  grants for OAI-related research (1.5 mil. total)
• Primary focus demonstrate utility of OAI
  metadata harvesting in context of scholarly
  inquiry
• Research Library Group (RLG)University of
  MichiganUniversity of Illinois at
  Urbana-ChampaignEmory University / Southeastern
  Library NetworkWoodrow Wilson International
  CenterUniversity of Virginia
• See http//www.arl.org/newsltr/217/waters.html

9
University of Illinois Mellon OAI Project

• July 2001 May 2003
• Primary Objectives
• Create demonstrate OAI tools
• Build portal to aggregated metadata describing
  cultural heritage resources
• Initially For OAI testing research
• Long-term As a sustained resource
• Investigate using EAD metadata in OAI context
• Research utility of aggregated metadata

10
University of Illinois Cultural Heritage Portal

• Harvests 25 OAI Providers
• Academic libraries archives
• Digital library projects
• Historical societies
• Aggregates 479,000 metadata items
• 55 text / sheet music
• 40 image / multimedia
• 5 archival / museum
• http//oai.grainger.uiuc.edu

11
Current Projects Addressing Similar Issues

• NSDL
• Digital library of resource collections and
  services, organized in support of science
  education at all levels.
• NOF-Digitize / EnrichUK
• Description and aggregation of digitized
  collections funded by the New Opportunities Fund
• Minerva Project
• Creating an agreed European common platform,
  recommendations and guidelines about
  digitization, metadata, long-term accessibility
  and preservation

12
Technical Challenges

• NLG Awardees have diverse technical resources
• Limited knowledge of / tools for working with XML
• Limited knowledge of community metadata schemas
• Limited knowledge of / access to CGI capabilities
• Early NLG projects have no resources earmarked
  for sharing metadata
• Technical implementations not always built with
  reuse and interoperability in mind

13
OAI Readiness Among NLG Projects
14
OAI for Static Repositories

• Lower barrier option for exposing relatively
  static and small collections of metadata
• Designed to scale well to about 5,000 metadata
  records
• Provider serves static XML file (no CGI required)
• 3rd party gateway generates valid OAI responses
• Supports only a subset of OAI options
• No sets, deleted records, resumptionTokens
• DateStamp granularity limited to YYYY-MM-DD
• Preliminary alpha version of OAI-SR guidelines
  available
• http//www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/guidelines-sta
  tic-repository.htm

15
(No Transcript)
16
OAI Static Repository Gateways

• SR Gateways support CGI extended path
• SR Gateways typically cache static repository XML
  files
• SR Gateway lists all SRs available through
  gateway in ltfriendsgt element (dynamic discovery
  of SRs)
• SR Gateways assumed to support automatedself-regi
  stration of SRs
• SRs should make themselves available through
  asingle SR Gateway
• SR Gateway applications available on
  SourceForge.net 1 2

17
Example of a Static Repository XML File
18
Identify OAI_DC Record MARC21 XML Record
19
Working with Turnkey Solutions

• OAI provider service now built into many popular
  digital library applications
• ContentDM, Encompass, DLXS, DSpace, EPrints.org
• Facilitates participation in OAI-PMH metadata
  sharing
• Some implementations may be limited
• Many support oai_dc metadata schema only
• May have limited feature set (e.g, no
  resumptionToken)
• Metadata mappings may not be configurable
• Community needs to advocate requirements strongly

20
Metadata Issues

• Wide range of metadata schemas in use
• Variations in Descriptive practices traditions
• Use of Dublin Core fields
• Granularity
• What is being described
• Different approaches to IP rights issues

21
Metadata Schemas Used By NLG Projects

• MARC and Dublin Core most common schemas
• Includes qualified DC DC with extra fields
• 24 projects - multiple schemas
• 14 of these using Dublin Core in combination with
  another schema

22
DC element usage (from Mellon)

• Records containing subject description element

SUBJECT DESCRIPTION
Digital libraries (10 total, 122,719 records) 78 36
Museums, hist. societies, etc. (6 total, 255,800 records) 93 93
Academic libraries (7 total, 235,294 records) 15 13

• Many different controlled and local vocabularies
  in use
• Granularity a record may describe a collection
  of coins or one coin

23
Describe the digital object?Excerpt of record
describing a cotton coverlet

• Description Digital image of a single-sized
  cotton coverlet for a bed with embroidered
  butterfly design. Handmade by Anna F. Ginsberg
  Hayutin.
• Source Materials cotton and embroidery floss.
  Dimensions 71 in. x 86 in. Markings top right
  hand corner has 1 1/2 in. x 1/2 in. label cut
  outs at upper left and right hand side for head
  board fabric is woven in a variation of a rib
  weave color each of yellow and gray
  hand-embroidered cotton butterflies and flowers
  from two shades of each color of embroidery floss
  - blue, pink, green and purple and single top 20
  in. bordered with blue and black cotton
  embroidery thread stitches used for embroidery
  running stitch, chain stitch, French knot and
  back stitches selvage edges left unfinished
  lower edges turned under and finished with large
  gray running stitches made with embroidery floss.
• Format Epson Expression 836 XL Scanner with
  Adobe Photoshop version 5.5 300 dpi 21-53K
  bytes. Available via the World Wide Web.
• Coverage
• Date Created 2001-09-19 094518 Updated
  20011107162451 Created 2001-04-05 Created
  1912-1920?
• Type Image

24
Or describe the analog object?Excerpt of record
describing Am. woven coverlet

• Description Materials Textile--Multi,
  PigmentDye Manufacturing Process
  Weaving--Hand, Spinning, Dyeing, Hand-loomed blue
  wool and white linen coverlet, worked in overshot
  weave in plain geometric variant of a
  checkerboard pattern.Coverlet is constructed from
  finely spun, indigo-dyed wool and undyed linen,
  woven with considerable skill. Although the
  pattern is simpler, the overall craftsmanship is
  higher than 1934.01.0094A. - D. Schrishuhn,
  11/19/99 This coverlet is an example of early
  "overshot" weaving construction, probably dating
  to the 1820's and is not attributable to any
  particular weaver. -- Georgette Meredith,
  10/9/1973
• Source
• Format 228 x 169 x 1.2 cm (1,629 g)
• Coverage Euro-American America, North United
  States Indiana? Illinois?
• Date Early 19th c. CE
• Type cultural physical object original

25
Various Concerns About IP Rights

• Overcoming reluctance to share metadata because
  of IP rights issues
• Concern that sharing metadata is giving away most
  valuable asset
• Uncertain whether license limits metadata sharing
• Uncertain whether to share metadata describing
  licensed information resources
• Machine readable IP rights attributes Needed to
  facilitate reuse

26
Portal Design Issues

• How best to organize aggregated metadata for
  browse
• Need scalable ways to build / implement
  classifications
• Need better methods for clustering and grouping
• Utilize relationships ties to collection
  descriptions
• How best to implement basic advanced searching
• Precise searching hard due to metadata usage
  variations
• Limited normalization possible more work needed
• Robust search ranking across large aggregations
  hard
• Need more audience-specific designs
• Need more dynamic interactive designs
• Need better support of educational
  instructional uses

27
Portal Design Mellon Project Experience

• Limited focus group testing
• 23 student teachers in honors-level C I class
• Assignment to students Use the site in preparing
  a lesson plan for high school social studies
  class
• Process
• Introduced site aggregated metadata concept
• Focus group interviews conducted
• Students papers examined
• Transaction logs analyzed

28
A Few Observations from Test

• 1. Users expected all links to point to digital
  objects
• Some records pointed to finding aids
• Some records pointed to collections web site
• Some records pointed to Library books on the
  shelf
• 2. Users unable to make use of search results
• Simple searches produced 1000s of unranked
  results
• Advanced search (with limits) rarely used
• 3. Distinction between portal and data providers
  unimportant to users

29
Rethinking what online access means

• To librarian curator

• To student teacher

30
Closing Thought Considering OAI in Context

• Descriptive, item-level metadata alone
  insufficient
• Must be used in combination with collection
  descriptions, user annotations, machine generated
  clustering,
• Distinction between collection item blurs in
  DLs
• Complex objects TEI, EAD, METS
• Granularity should museum describe every
  arrowhead in end-user search discovery system
• Relationships between items provide context
• Need to tie collection registry to item-level
  repository
• OAI-PMH not limited to item-level descriptive
  metadata