Seven minutes to Digitize and Describe: An approachable, hands-on metadata workshop

Presentation from the MARAC conference in Roanoke, VA on October 7–10, 2015. S17 - “Un session” II: A MARAC Mini Unconference

Investigating the Roles and Requirements, Manifestations and Management of Metadata in the Creation of Reliable and Preservation of Authentic Electronic Entities Created by Dynamic, Interactive and Experiential Systems: Report on the Work and Findings of the Interpares 2 Description Cross Domain Group

Metadata that is associated with either an information system or an information object for purposes of description, administration, legal requirements, technical functionality, use and usage, and preservation, plays a critical role in ensuring the creation, management, preservation and use and re-use of trustworthymaterials, including records. Recordkeeping1 metadata, of which one key type is archival description, plays a particularly important role in documenting the reliability and authenticity of records and recordkeeping systemsas well as the various contexts (legal-administrative, provenancial, procedural, documentary, and technical) within which records are created and kept as they move across space and time. In the digital environment, metadata is also the means by which it is possible to identify how record components – those constituent aspects of a digital record that may be managed, stored and used separately by the creator or the preserver – can be reassembled to generate an authentic copy of a record or reformulated per a user’s request as a customized output package.Issues relating to the creation, capture, management and preservation of adequate metadata are, therefore, integral to any research study addressing the reliability and authenticity of digital entities, regardless of the community, sector or institution within which they are being created. The InterPARES 2 Description Cross-Domain Group (DCD) examined the conceptualization, definitions, roles, and current functionality of metadata and archival description in terms of requirements generated by InterPARES 12. Because of the needs to communicate the work of InterPARES in a meaningful way across not only other disciplines, but also different archival traditions; to interface with, evaluate and inform existing standards, practices and other research projects; and to ensure interoperability across the three focus areas of InterPARES2, the Description Cross-Domain also addressed its research goals with reference to wider thinking about and developments in recordkeeping and metadata. InterPARES2 addressed not only records, however, but a range of digital information objects (referred to as “entities” by InterPARES 2, but not to be confused with the term “entities” as used in metadata and database applications) that are the products and by-products of government, scientific and artistic activities that are carried out using dynamic, interactive or experiential digital systems. The nature of these entities was determined through a diplomatic analysis undertaken as part of extensive case studies of digital systems that were conducted by the InterPARES 2 Focus Groups. This diplomatic analysis established whether the entities identified during the case studies were records, non-records that nevertheless raised important concerns relating to reliability and authenticity, or “potential records.” To be determined to be records, the entities had to meet the criteria outlined by archival theory – they had to have a fixed documentary format and stable content. It was not sufficient that they be considered to be or treated as records by the creator. “Potential records” is a new construct that indicates that a digital system has the potential to create records upon demand, but does not actually fix and set aside records in the normal course of business. The work of the Description Cross-Domain Group, therefore, addresses the metadata needs for all three categories of entities.Finally, since “metadata” as a term is used today so ubiquitously and in so many different ways by different communities, that it is in peril of losing any specificity, part of the work of the DCD sought to name and type categories of metadata. It also addressed incentives for creators to generate appropriate metadata, as well as issues associated with the retention, maintenance and eventual disposition of the metadata that aggregates around digital entities over time.

PCMAT Metadata Authoring Tool

This paper introduces the PCMAT platform project and, in particular, one of its components, the PCMAT Metadata Authoring Tool. This is an educational web application that allows the project metadata creators to write the metadata associated to each learning object without any concern for the metadata schema semantics. Furthermore it permits the project managers to add or delete elements to the schema, without having to rewrite or compile any code.

Extensible metadata repository for information systems

Thesis submitted to Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in Computer Science

Design of an extensible metadata editor based on RDF

The content of a Learning Object is frequently characterized by metadata from several standards, such as LOM, SCORM and QTI. Specialized domains require new application profiles that further complicate the task of editing the metadata of learning object since their data models are not supported by existing authoring tools. To cope with this problem we designed a metadata editor supporting multiple metadata languages, each with its own data model. It is assumed that the supported languages have an XML binding and we use RDF to create a common metadata representation, independent from the syntax of each metadata languages. The combined data model supported by the editor is defined as an ontology. Thus, the process of extending the editor to support a new metadata language is twofold: firstly, the conversion from the XML binding of the metadata language to RDF and vice-versa; secondly, the extension of the ontology to cover the new metadata model. In this paper we describe the general architecture of the editor, we explain how a typical metadata language for learning objects is represented as an ontology, and how this formalization captures all the data required to generate the graphical user interface of the editor.

Tuning metadata for better movie content-based recommendation systems

The increasing number of television channels, on-demand services and online content, is expected to contribute to a better quality of experience for a costumer of such a service. However, the lack of efficient methods for finding the right content, adapted to personal interests, may lead to a progressive loss of clients. In such a scenario, recommendation systems are seen as a tool that can fill this gap and contribute to the loyalty of users. Multimedia content, namely films and television programmes are usually described using a set of metadata elements that include the title, a genre, the date of production, and the list of directors and actors. This paper provides a deep study on how the use of different metadata elements can contribute to increase the quality of the recommendations suggested. The analysis is conducted using Netflix and Movielens datasets and aspects such as the granularity of the descriptions, the accuracy metric used and the sparsity of the data are taken into account. Comparisons with collaborative approaches are also presented.

Assessment of metadata associated with geotag pictures

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial Technologies.

Video metadata extraction in a videoMail system

Currently the world swiftly adapts to visual communication. Online services like YouTube and Vine show that video is no longer the domain of broadcast television only. Video is used for different purposes like entertainment, information, education or communication. The rapid growth of today’s video archives with sparsely available editorial data creates a big problem of its retrieval. The humans see a video like a complex interplay of cognitive concepts. As a result there is a need to build a bridge between numeric values and semantic concepts. This establishes a connection that will facilitate videos’ retrieval by humans. The critical aspect of this bridge is video annotation. The process could be done manually or automatically. Manual annotation is very tedious, subjective and expensive. Therefore automatic annotation is being actively studied. In this thesis we focus on the multimedia content automatic annotation. Namely the use of analysis techniques for information retrieval allowing to automatically extract metadata from video in a videomail system. Furthermore the identification of text, people, actions, spaces, objects, including animals and plants. Hence it will be possible to align multimedia content with the text presented in the email message and the creation of applications for semantic video database indexing and retrieving.

All-Ireland Health Data Inventory. Part 1: Metadata for key data sources, version 1.0

The All-Ireland Health Data Inventory. Part 1 is a catalogue of key sources of health data in the Republic and Northern Ireland. It includes relevant datasets from the major information reviews, conducted in the North and South, in the past few years. Information is essential for informed decision making and service provision. This inventory draws together information sources to facilitate such decision making. The inventory is intended as a resource for health professionals, researchers and the general public, providing the first phase of a ‘one-stop’ catalogue of health data. The datasets have been catalogued using an expanding numbering system which will allow for the inclusion of future resources. The Institute of Public Health in Ireland is in the process of expanding the Inventory to include further data sources.

Metadata For Identity Management of Population Registers

A population register is an inventory of residents within a country, with their characteristics (date of birth, sex, marital status, etc.) and other socio-economic data, such as occupation or education. However, data on population are also stored in numerous other public registers such as tax, land, building and housing, military, foreigners, vehicles, etc. Altogether they contain vast amounts of personal and sensitive information. Access to public information is granted by law in many countries, but this transparency is generally subject to tensions with data protection laws. This paper proposes a framework to analyze data access (or protection) requirements, as well as a model of metadata for data exchange.

Enriching e-learning metadata through digital library usage analysis

Peer-reviewed

Metadata for describing learning scenarios under European Higher Education Area paradigm

In this paper we identify the requirements for creating formal descriptions of learning scenarios designed under the European HigherEducation Area paradigm, using competences and learning activities as the basic pieces of the learning process, instead of contents and learning resources, pursuing personalization. Classical arrangements of content based courses are no longer enough to describe all the richness of this new learning process, where user profiles, competences and complex hierarchical itineraries need to be properly combined. We study the intersection with the current IMS Learning Design specification and theadditional metadata required for describing such learning scenarios. This new approach involves the use of case based learning and collaborativelearning in order to acquire and develop competences, following adaptive learning paths in two structured levels.

Data Consistency by a Metadata Management Solution

This thesis consists of three main theoretical themes: quality of data, success of information systems, and metadata in data warehousing. Loosely defined, metadata is descriptive data about data, and, in this thesis, master data means reference data about customers, products etc. The objective of the thesis is to contribute to an implementation of a metadata management solution for an industrial enterprise. The metadata system incorporates a repository, integration, delivery and access tools, as well as semantic rules and procedures for master data maintenance. It targets to improve maintenance processes and quality of hierarchical master data in the case company’s informational systems. That should bring benefits to whole organization in improved information quality, especially in cross-system data consistency, and in more efficient and effective data management processes. As the result of this thesis, the requirements for the metadata management solution in case were compiled, and the success of the new information system and the implementation project was evaluated.

Key performance indicators for successful metadata governance

Metadata in increasing levels of sophistication has been the most powerful concept used in management of unstructured information ever since the first librarian used the Dewey decimal system for library classifications. It remains to be seen, however, what the best approach is to implementing metadata to manage huge volumes of unstructured information in a large organization. Also, once implemented, how is it possible to track whether it is adding value to the company, and whether the implementation has been successful? Existing literature on metadata seems to either focus too much on technical and quality aspects or describe issues with respect to adoption for general information management initiatives. This research therefore, strives to contribute to these gaps: to give a consolidated framework for striving to understand the value added by implementing metadata. The basic methodology used is that of case study, which incorporates aspects of design science, surveys, and interviews in order to provide a holistic approach to quantitative and qualitative analysis of the case. The research identifies the various approaches to implementing metadata, particularly studying the one followed by the unit of analysis of case study, a large company in the Oil and Gas Sector. Of the three approaches identified, the selected company already follows an approach that appears to be superior. The researcher further explores its shortcomings, and proposes a slightly modified approach that can handle them. The research categorically and thoroughly (in context) identifies the top effectiveness criteria, and corresponding key performance indicators(KPIs) that can be measured to understand the level of advancement of the metadata management initiative in the company. In an effort to contrast and have a basis of comparison for the findings, the research also includes views from information managers dealing with core structured data stored in ERPs and other databases. In addition, the results include the basic criteria that can be used to evaluate metrics, in order to classify a metric as a KPI.