Tag Archives: Metadata
Aggregating an Aggregator: An Elegant Solution
Europeana is an aggregating digital library that aims at referencing all the resources digitized by museums and cultural heritage institutions in Europe. Europeana resources are described according to a Europeana Data Model (EDM) and their descriptions are compiled in a … Continue reading →
The JSON Advantage
In our last post “the facet solution“, we presented a generic metadata model that, thanks to a facet mechanism, can be used to describe potentially any type of resource. A key aspect of this facet approach is the ability for … Continue reading →
The Facet Solution
In a recent project, we were asked to help creating a world-wide catalog of all the resources available online about a given domain (the actual domain is not relevant to this discussion). These resources consisted of various resource types (data … Continue reading →
Are We Related?
In the bibliographical domain, the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) distinguishes between aspects of human creation relevant to different contexts. The FRBR concepts of “work”, “expression”, “manifestation”, and “item” as they relate to digital resources are illustrated in the … Continue reading →
Specification Mix-and-Match
To make things simple, let us assume that a metadata specification consists of: A list of metadata elements and their value spaces, some of these elements being mandatory, others optional (e.g., element ‘country’ is mandatory, element ‘state’ is optional); A … Continue reading →
Metadata Standard Profiling Dilemma
There are widely recognized metadata standards available to describe digital content. Each standard usually targets the use of a specific category of resources in a specific context. Relying on standards avoids reinventing the wheel while benefiting from best practices developed … Continue reading →
Away with Ambiguities …
A valuable alternative to free texts are controlled vocabularies because their meaning is explicitly stated, which avoids the inevitable ambiguities inherent in natural language. Controlled vocabularies can vary from a flat list of terms to more structured ones where terms … Continue reading →