BIBLINK - LB 4034 - D1.1 Metadata Formats

Metadata Formats
Work Package 1 of Telematics for Libraries project BIBLINK (LB 4034)

2. Management Overview

2.1 Executive Summary

This is a summary of the recommendations made in this report:

Project partners need to consider these scoping issues and refine the scoping of the project to allow criteria to be drawn up for decision making.

Predicated on the stated assumptions as to scope, it is recommended that BIBLINK should concentrate on formats in Bands Two and Three for the exchange format. This does not preclude the possibility that conversion will be required from formats outside these Bands e.g. from more complex formats in Band Four into a simpler format, but that the formats for data exchange would be located in Band Two or Three.

As part of the consensus building process, publishers and national libraries should identify the objects and relationships which need to be represented in metadata describing electronic resources.

Project participants need to agree a clearer definition of:

the level of detail required as regards content of metadata (simple CIP record or a richer record)
what 'object level' national libraries will want to describe (the level of granularity of resource that will be described)
to what extent the content of metadata can be covered by rules for formulation of content (i.e. cataloguing rules)
reaffirm whether, within the project, the aim of the project is to catalogue electronic publications from a few well established publishers or to address improving bibliographic control of the wider world of web publishing.

We need to make explicit assumptions about the business model for the provision and exploitation of metadata.

It seems one metadata format may not be sufficient for the diverse body of publishers described in the scoping document. It would be more realistic to consider two formats to allow for the creation of a brief record and a more complex record.

Consider use of Dublin Core as a minimum element set. Consider use of BIC non-serial DTD and SSSH for more complex records. Consider implementation of Warwick Framework to package more complex SGML records with Dublin Core records.

We accept that all metadata formats in this area are unstable. We need to define what level of maturity and stability are required in our format(s) of choice. At that stage we may wish to influence the development of the format(s).

2.2 Acknowledgements

I should like to thank Brian Green (BIC) and Brian Holt (British Library) for providing background information for this report.

2.3 Scope Statement

This document is deliverable D1.1, Metadata Formats, for the BIBLINK project, and documents the findings of work package 1, 'Study of Metadata'. The objectives of this work package were to:

identify the major current approaches to encoding metadata
describe the service and technical constraints in which they are used
perform a comparative analysis of their content
make recommendations.

The report uses D0.1, 'Scoping Study', to focus the work in the areas of publication types and publisher types.

A study by the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) to undertake a comparative analysis and produce a series of recommendations is also underway, and will be documented separately.

This report will have an impact on the following phase 1 work packages:

WP3 - Consensus Building
WP4 - Format Conversion Feasibility
WP5 - Transmission of Data.

Compilation of this report has highlighted particular areas where refinement is required to the scoping of the project. These areas are indicated in the report particularly in section 6.1 and the Conclusion, and the various recommendations suggest where further consideration of scoping would be beneficial.

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