Home | Resource Description, Discovery 
and Retrieval (Summary)
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SCOPE

Issues dealt with in this guideline include:
Resource description
Metadata
Collection level descriptions
Controlled vocabularies and thesauri
Unique identifiers
Resource discovery
Library catalogues
Search engines
Lists of recommended sites
Gateways and portals
Clumps
Community information
Learning support
XML
RDF
Z39.50
Harvest
Image retrieval
Future agenda
Semantic web
Ontologies
Digital signatures
Web services
Good practice - links

Note: It is anticipated that libraries will be approaching resource description, discovery and retrieval from different starting positions and that many, if not most, may need to adopt a staged approach to implementation. It is also anticipated that these guidelines may be used to support procurement – either of library systems or to aid the appointment of contractors or consultants.

POLICY ISSUES

Relevance for libraries
Libraries operate in a networked information environment. The advent of the Internet means that even the smallest branch library can now have access to an ever increasing amount of distributed digital information available over the web. Librarians need to understand how best they can assist their users in discovering and retrieving the information they need. The knowledge society, lifelong learning and the growing impetus towards interaction with central government by electronic means that easy access to information is of increasing importance for all citizens.

Many libraries are also creating new digital content themselves – be it their library web pages or new multimedia content, sometimes funded by specific digitisation programmes (see digitisation and funding). They need to understand how to describe this new content such that it is both easily retrieved by users and interoperable with other digital content.

The technologies and standards in this area are still emerging and will continue to change and develop over time. Libraries need to be aware of the current state of the art so as to avoid the adoption of inappropriate or obsolescent technology and standards.

Libraries need an understanding of these issues in order to plan and prioritise their work and particularly when they are procuring new systems or commissioning development work from outside consultants/contractors.

What is interoperability?
In relation to digital content interoperability means that it should be as widely reusable, portable i.e. across different networks, systems and organisations, and as long lasting as possible. The key to achieving this is through standards - codified rules and guidelines for the creation, description and management of digital resources (see Reinventing the Wheel D-Lib Magazine Jan 2002 for more information).

Why is interoperability important?
So that can users can more easily search and retrieve information from different sources - across different catalogues, across different domains (libraries, museums and archives) and across different resource types (books and museum artefacts).

New services and different workloads
Making resources available over the Internet, whether they are created by the library or acquired in some way (co-operation, payment/licensing etc) will have implications for what type of staff will be required; the training they will need; what services will be provided; and how these services will be delivered (see multimedia). Libraries will need to make strategic choices at local level as to what their priorities will be, how much they want to spend and what they want to do.

Increasing dependence on digital content.
Libraries will need to handle the increasing amount of material, vital to their users, which will only be available in electronic form. This material may be more expensive than its printed counterpart and subject to surveillance and control by the publisher or distributor. Licensing will be an important issue. (See also Clumps).

GOOD PRACTICE GUIDELINES: RESOURCE DESCRIPTION

Libraries should consider applying metadata to the resources and webpages they create. They should also consider the use of XML.

Metadata
Briefly defined as “structured data about data”. A catalogue record, for example, is metadata which describes a particular book. Metadata has come to the fore as a means of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of finding digital resources on the Web by adopting a consistent structure for describing websites and other digital resources. The types of metadata elements associated with a book might include: author, title, publisher, date, ISBN, classification etc. and those associated with a webpage might include title, creator, subject, description etc. There is a helpful introduction on the Diffuse website.

Metadata can be used to support a variety of purposes:

• Resource Description Metadata – to describe resources and facilitate retrieval. There are a number of different types of which Marc and Dublin Core are perhaps the most well known:
  Marc, or Machine Readable Cataloguing, is a bibliographic metadata schema, run by the Library of Congress. The current version is MARC 21.
  Dublin Core – a system for describing “document like objects” and which consists of the following 15 metadata elements: 1. title 2. creator 3. subject 4. subject keywords description 5. publisher 6. contributor 7. date 8. resource type 9. format 10. resource identifier 11. source 12. language 13. relation 14. coverage 15. rights management.

• Preservation Metadata – to support preservation and archiving activities. The CEDARS Project addressed the issues raised by preservation of digital resources.

• Rights Metadata – to express Intellectual Property Rights in a resource. (See the Indecs Project for instance.)

• Education Metadata - to help with the resource retrieval tasks of educational institutions and managed or virtual learning environments e.g. students records and descriptions of courses. See the Diffuse site for more information on metadata to support e-learning.

• Geospatial Metadata for use with digital maps and Geographical Information Systems (see the Diffuse website for more information on Geographic data exchange standards.

Home | Resource Description, Discovery 
and Retrieval (Summary)
Full Text: Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | Page 4