Resource description and access for the digital world

Gordon DunsireCentre for Digital Library Research

University of StrathclydeScotland

Resource description and access (1.1)

RDAContent standard for metadata for

bibliographic description and accessBased on 100+ years of experience with the

Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR) and its predecessors

AACR is currently the world’s most used content standard

Resource description and access (1.2)

RDA is addressing today’s needsWider range of information carriers, physical

and digital, with a greater depth and complexity of content

Metadata creation, maintenance and use by a wider range of personnel in a wider range of roles and domains

Many new metadata formats/structures in useUtility of the online digital environmentInternationalisation and globalisation of

information services

Resource description and access (1.3)

RDA components include:Metadata attributes (fields) of bibliographic

resourcesGuidance on creating metadata content

Including transcription from the described resource

Value vocabularies for specified attributesIncluding carrier type (e.g. “online resource”) and

content type (e.g. “performed music”)

To be published as an online product in early 2009

Resource description and access (2)

The wider environmentInternational Standard for Bibliographic

Description (ISBD) and Statement of International Cataloguing Principles

(Mostly) harmonious with RDA

Wider set of related standards developments which are becoming increasingly interlinked

RDA and related standards (1)

RDA attributes are based on Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) and Functional Requirements for Authority Data (FRAD)Developed by IFLA (FRAD in draft)

FRBR recently extended to Object-oriented FRBR (FRBRoo)Based on CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model

(CRM)Project to define appropriate namespaces for

FRBR entities and relationships in Resource Description Framework (RDF) and other appropriate syntaxes

RDA and related standards (2)

RDA/ONIX frameworkAn ontology developed by RDA and the

publishing community to improve metadata interoperability

Set of low-level attributes for describing the content and carrier of a bibliographic resource

Controlled vocabularies for some attributesAttributes combined to form high-level content

and carrier types for RDA

RDA and related standards (3)

DCMI/RDA Task GroupEnabling broader use of RDA by DCMI and other

Semantic Web groupsIncluding SKOS, IEEE-LOM

Define RDA modelling entities as an RDF vocabulary

Identify value vocabularies as candidates for publication in RDF Schema or Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS)

Develop a DC Application Profile for RDA based on FRBR and FRAD

Some links

FRBRooCRM

ISBDFRBR

RDAMARC

RDADC

RDAFRBR

RDAONIXFRBRooFRBR

The chain(s)

FRBRooCRM FRBR

RDAONIX

DC

MARC

ISBD

Foundations

Semantic Web RDF (Resource Description Framework)

Statements about Web resources in the form of subject-predicate-object expressions, called triples

E.g. “This presentation” – “has creator” – “Gordon Dunsire”

SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System) Expresses the basic structure and content of concept

schemes such as thesauri and other types of controlled vocabularies

An RDF application

OWL (Web Ontology Language) Explicitly represents the meaning of terms in vocabularies

and the relationships between them

Building blocks

Each component of an RDF statement (triple) is a “resource”

RDF is about making machine-processable statements, requiringA machine-processable language for representing

RDF statementsExtensible Markup Language (XML)

A system of machine-processable identifiers for resources (subjects, predicates, objects)

Uniform Resource Identifier (URI)

For full machine-processing, an RDF statement is a set of three URIs

Identifiers

Things requiring identification: Object “This presentation”

e.g. its electronic location (URL): http://cdlr.strath.ac.uk/pubs/dunsireg/idf080617RDA.pps

Predicate “has creator”e.g. http://purl.org/dc/terms/creator

Object “Gordon Dunsire”e.g. URI of entry in Library of Congress Name Authority File

Declaring vocabularies/values in SKOS and OWL provides URIs

DOI and URI are compatible

Without such identifiers, the Web will never become Semantic

Identifying the future

The DOI model shares the same underlying ontology approach as the RDA/ONIX framework

A funding bid, supported by IDF, has been submitted to the UK’s Joint Information Systems Committee/Publishers and Library/Learning Solutions (JISC/PALS) partnership, to extend the framework by:Creating a comprehensive vocabulary of resource

relators and categories, to provide:A mapping to support metadata crosswalks and

transformationsA definitive reference set to support further standards

work

Thank you

Questions?Another identifier: g.dunsire@strath.ac.uk