Administrative metadata for collection-level description records

1. The problem

The RSLP Collection Description schema [1] describes a set of metadata attributes for the description of a number of related entities/resources:

• attributes describing the Collection
;
• attributes describing the Location (or Locations) of the Collection;
• identification and/or description of three related Agents:
  • the Collector of the Collection
  • the Owner of the Collection
  • the Administrator of the Location
• external relationships between the Collection described in this record and other Collections

(See [1] for a full description of these entities and the descriptive attributes.)

The RSLP Collection Description schema does not prescribe any means of describing the collection-level description record itself. Such information may be useful for several purposes:

• Management of collection-level description records: CLDs are themselves resources which must be administered and maintained, possibly over a long period of time and probably by a number of different individuals. It is important that the individuals responsible for managing CLDs are able to track important updates to the content of a record or changes to its status. This class of information is often called administrative metadata, though that term is often used more broadly to describe information about a metadata record, including the other classes of information described here.
• User interpretation of collection-level description records: In order to make an evaluation of the content of a CLD, the user may wish to know the answer to questions such as, "Who said this about this collection? When was this information last updated?". Where a record is presented in the context of a digital service over which the creator of the CLD has some control, such information may be delivered to the user as part of that presentational context. Increasingly, however, CLDs may be used in a range of different contexts, and may be presented to users through digital services over which the creator of the original record has little control. If this provenance metadata is to remain available to the end user of those services, it must be be provided explicitly as part of, or in association with, the CLD record.
• Use of collection-level description records: CLDs (and other classes of metadata record) are resources which have value to their owner and creator. While part of the motivation for creating such records is that they will be deployed in digital services to enhance the discovery and use of the collections they describe, the owner of the record may wish to exert some control over how the record is used by other service providers. To do so, they may associate a statement of use rights with the CLD record. Another facet of usage may be a description of the intended audience for the record: a collection owner may choose to provide multiple CLD records for the same collection, with descriptive content talored for different audiences.

2. Administrative metadata for collection-level descriptions

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<rdf:RDF
  xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
  xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
  xmlns:dcterms="http://purl.org/dc/terms/">

  <rdf:Description rdf:about="http://example.org/rslpcld/cld-gb-248-001.rdf">

    <dcterms:created>2001-08-15</dcterms:created>
    <dc:creator>Smith, John</dc:creator>
    <dcterms:modified>2002-12-05</dcterms:modified>
    <dc:contributor>Jones, Mary</dc:contributor>
    <dc:publisher>Example University Library</dc:publisher>
    <dc:language>en-GB</dc:language>
    <dc:source rdf:resource="http://example.org/ead/gb-248-001.xml"/>
    <dc:rights>This metadata record is copyright Example
       University Library. Permission is granted for personal and
       educational use. Other uses prohibited without permission
       from the publisher.</dc:rights>
    <dcterms:audience>Academic researchers</dcterms:audience>

  </rdf:Description>

</rdf:RDF>

<admin_dc:admeta
  xmlns:admin_dc="http://example.org/admin_dc/"
  xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
  xmlns:dcterms="http://purl.org/dc/terms/">
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://example.org/admin_dc/
                      http://example.org/admin_dc/admeta.xsd">

  <dcterms:created>2001-08-15</dcterms:created>
  <dc:creator>Smith, John</dc:creator>
  <dcterms:modified>2002-12-05</dcterms:modified>
  <dc:contributor>Jones, Mary</dc:contributor>
  <dc:publisher>Example University Library</dc:publisher>
  <dc:language>en-GB</dc:language>
  <dc:source>http://example.org/ead/gb-248-001.xml</dc:source>
  <dc:rights>This metadata record is copyright Example
     University Library. Permission is granted for personal and
     educational use. Other uses prohibited without permission
     from the publisher.</dc:rights>
  <dcterms:audience>Academic researchers</dcterms:audience>


</admin_dc:admeta>

Some issues

Acknowledgements

The issue of administrative and rights metadata for CLDs was raised in a Discussion Group at the second Collection Description Focus Workshop [8].

This proposal is based in part on the proposal for administrative metadata requirements for the metadata records shared in the Resource Discovery Network [9].