Musing about metadata for OER

[Nick Sheppard]

Oribinally posted at: http://repositorynews.wordpress.com/2009/08/05/musing-about-metadat...

(Disclaimer: I am not a qualified librarian or cataloguer.)

Thus far I've only really considered, in detail, the minutiae of research specific metadata (a consequence of the ongoing project to repurpose an LO repository as an OA archive of research). However, this morning I uploaded my first learning object to intraLibrary that has been specifically designated as an OER for the Unicycle project. The resource itself isn't terribly exciting in that it is just a Word.doc but it makes sense to start with a relatively simple object than a more exotic file type or package.

The metadata template I'm using is taken directly from JORUM without any modification and is consequently (currently at least) based on IEEE LOM though it's worth restating that we've recently learned that JORUM will be using DSpace to serve OER rather than intraLibrary so that service's template is almost certain to change considerably in the very near future.

Mandatory fields:

Title
Description(s)
Keyword(s)
Contributor(s): Author(s)
Contribution Date
Payment Required (yes/no)
Subject to Copyright (yes/no)
Statement of Copyright and Restriction

Recommended Fields:

Version
Status
IMS LRM Metadata Identifier
Role of Metadata Contributor
Metadata Contributor(s)
Date of Metadata Contribution
Language of Metadata Record
Technical Format
Location of Resource
Language of Intended User
Type of Resource
Intended for Use In
Level of Difficulty

Optional Fields:

Description of Contribution Date
Module Code
Module Title
IMS LRM Metadata Identifier
Catalogue
Description of Metadata Contribution Date
Format of Metadata Record
Size Resource in Bytes
Type of Delivery System
Name of Delivery System
Minimum Version of Delivery System
Maximum Version of Delivery System
How to Install This Resource
Special Requirements for Use
Duration of Media Resource: Playing Time
Type of Interactivity
Educational Purpose Description
Language of Intended User
Level of Interactivity
Semantic Density
Intended for Use By
Completion Time
CLA Reporting Data

In addition, the resource is classified against JACS (Joint Academic Coding System) - again emulating the current (intraLibrary) JORUM configuration and can be ascribed one of the six Creative Commons attribution licences.

So off I went.

Title is straightforward, and Description - though this field does require some thought to make it useful - but what about Keyword(s)? My first thought is that we need some sort of controlled vocabulary - for research material I am using Library of Congress Authorities which is well established practice for this type of material but perhaps less appropriate for learning objects; one could rely on author produced keywords but these are perhaps not easily generated as formal metadata and will tend to lack consistency (social tagging is perhaps a slightly different issue and intraLibrary does have a facility for ascribing user-generated tags after the resource has been published.)

I posted my idle musings to Twitter and was immediately called to account by @philbarker and @LornaMCampbell who both asked what specific aspects of the learning object the controlled vocab would need to describe. @ambrouk acknowledged it was a big question and suggested two separate criteria: a) subject classification b) everything else author might tell you about / user says they want?

Input also came from @lynncorrigan and @KavuBob who pointed me to the HILT (High Level Thesaurus) project at Strathclyde - http://hilt.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/hilt4/demonstrators.html

I haven't yet looked closely at this project but from the Twitter response it's clearly an area that needs further research so this is a quick post to further the discussion...I'll come back when I've explored the issue in more detail and all perspectives in the meantime gratefully received.

Some final unstructured thoughts at this stage:

• The need for a lightweight metadata template - which I guess the mandatory subset is though even this requires Keyword(s) AND classification against JACS...AND social tags can also be applied. To what extent the recommended/optional fields need to be completed depends to some extent on the type of resource though I suspect that some of these fields will actually need to be mandatory for certain resource types - Duration of Media Resource: Playing time for example
• How the metadata relates to resource discovery on the modern web - metadata is ultimately to aid resource discovery (and nail down copyright and licencing). Where will our OERs be primarily discovered from? A Leeds Met interface/a JORUM interface/Google/All of the above/somewhere else?
• Workflows - who uploads resources and applies metadata? The creator/repository administrator? Does there perhaps need to be a multiple stage workflow utilising something like the recently released JORUM quick deposit tool (ideally based on SWORD) whereby metadata is subsequently enriched by trained staff?

[Nick Sheppard]

Useful comment from Gareth Waller of Jorum originally posted to Repository News

Hi Nick,

Interesting post, just some comments from a Jorum perspective.

As I’m sure you have seen, the Jorum OER Deposit tool http://deposit.jorum.ac.uk (which was developed to support the OER programme) has a very low barrier of entry for a depositor in terms of metadata. We wanted to reduce the metadata profile down to a minimum set to help depositors but still contain enough metadata for resources to be discovered. The profile is as follows:

Mandatory metadata set:

- Title
- Overview (Description)
- Keywords
- Author Name
- Licence

Recommended metadata set:

- Project name
- Creation date
- Classification (JACS subject classification)

System Generated metadata set:

- Publisher
- Contributed Date
- Language
- Identifier

The ‘keywords’ metadata is currently user generated and does not use a controlled vocabulary.

As you are already aware, the open side to Jorum will be served from DSpace i.e. any content licensed under a Creative Commons license. DSpace supports qualified Dublin Core as its metadata set and does not out of the box support LOM. We will therefore be applying a metadata crosswalk to convert metadata stored in an IMS content package to Dublin Core (e.g. content which was deposited via the OER deposit tool).

I agree with you that a lightweight metadata template is a good idea as it makes the deposit process much quicker for the contributor and also extra metadata may be redundant if an end user never searches on these fields.

Resource discovery is an important consideration for Jorum and integration with major search engines e.g. Google is something we are looking at.

Hope that helps

Gareth Waller
(Jorum Technical Manager)

[Nick Sheppard]

Useful comment from Phil barker of CETIS - cut and pasted from Repository news - hope that's OK Phil

Hi Nick, I think that your starting points for metadata requirements should be the programme requirements and you own project requirements. Try not to put effort into creating metadata unless you know it will be useful (you have plenty of other things you could be doing). You should also bear in mind that not all information that you want to convey to users of the resource needs to be encoded in formal, machine readable metadata. For example, the important but rather complex set of information around attribution, provenance, and copyright ownership is perhaps quite easy to deal with by have a “credits” page or section on the resource itself; what do you gain by making this machine readable? See John’s post on Open Educational Resources, metadata, and self-description.

More specific to your musings and the technical set up you have, I wouldn’t put keywords from controlled vocabularies into the the LOM’s general keywords field, for the simple reason that you will lose the information on which vocabulary/ies you used. Use LOM classification instead. That has advantages if you’re sending the metadata elsewhere and also with Intralibrary it means that you put the resource into a browsable hierarchy of classification headings. (Incidentally the LOM keywords field is a good place to put the UKOER tag.)

I’ll be writing a blog post of my own on this in the next week or two, I’ll try to make sure to send a trackback link.