Meta Data Services

About: Meta Data Services is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2564 publications have been published within this topic receiving 40102 citations.

Automatically producing IMS AccessForAll Metadata

Abstract: Accessible e-learning is becoming a key issue in ensuring a complete inclusion of people with disabilities within the knowledge society. Many efforts have been done to include accessibility information in e-learning metadata and the major result consists in the IMS AccessForAll Metadata definition. Unfortunately the complex behavior managed by this standard could be perceived by authors as a new boring and difficult activity enforcing the idea that the production of accessible Learning Objects (LOs) is too complex to be accomplished. This paper presents a novel component of an authoring and producing software architecture, designed and implemented to automatically create the IMS AccessForAll Metadata description of an accessible LO.

Taming the metadata mess

Abstract: The rapid growth of scientific data shows no sign of abating. This growth has led to a new problem: with so much scientific data at hand, stored in thousands of datasets, how can scientists find the datasets most relevant to their research interests? We have addressed this problem by adapting Information Retrieval techniques, developed for searching text documents, into the world of (primarily numeric) scientific data. We propose an approach that uses a blend of automated and “semi-curated” methods to extract metadata from large archives of scientific data, then evaluates ranked searches over this metadata. We describe a challenge identified during an implementation of our approach: the large and expanding list of environmental variables captured by the archive do not match the list of environmental variables in the minds of the scientists. We briefly characterize the problem and describe our initial thoughts on resolving it.

Distributing non-MARC metadata: the CUGIR metadata sharing project

Abstract: Technical Service departments throughout libraries today are increasingly in the position to create and maintain non-MARC metadata that may be shared among institutions. The Cornell University Geospatial Information Repository (CUGIR) Metadata Sharing Project is an example of a system that manages heterogeneous metadata such as MARC, Dublin Core, and Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata (CSDGM). The mechanics and policies required to exchange MARC records are mature and well understood. In contrast, non-MARC metadata resource sharing is largely uncharted territory. The authors present and discuss the mechanisms they implemented to enable heterogeneous metadata sharing. Now that CUGIR geospatial metadata records are widely distributed, searchers who might not otherwise have access to geospatial information can more easily discover what they need.

A Method for Automating Geospatial Dataset Metadata

Abstract: Metadata have long been recognised as crucial to geospatial asset management and discovery, and yet undertaking their creation remains an unenviable task often to be avoided. This paper proposes a practical approach designed to address such concerns, decomposing various data creation, management, update and documentation process steps that are subsequently leveraged to contribute towards metadata record completion. Using a customised utility embedded within a common GIS application, metadata elements are computationally derived from an imposed feature metadata standard, dataset geometry, an integrated storage protocol and pre-prepared content, and instantiated within a common geospatial discovery convention. Yielding 27 out of a 32 total metadata elements (or 15 out of 17 mandatory elements) the approach demonstrably lessens the burden of metadata authorship. It also encourages improved geospatial asset management whilst outlining core requisites for developing a more open metadata strategy not bound to any particular application domain.

Towards a versatile metadata exchange format for digital museum collections

Abstract: This paper presents further extensions of the virtual museum metadata set ViMCOX (Virtual Museum and Cultural Object Exchange Format). Recent research in the field of virtual museum design illustrates issues concerned with presenting content and contextual information for heterogeneous audiences; it addresses visitors' preferences for guidance as well as their need for content-related and technical mediation during virtual museum visits. This paper describes the incorporation of the TourML metadata scheme, which allows visitors to take guided tours of a 3D virtual museum or to ”wander” through the virtual rooms and to select from a range of multilingual supplementary materials. In doing so, it references the exhibition space modeling capabilities of ViMCOX as well as real museum visitors' behaviors. Furthermore, the paper presents new metadata components for extended architectural design, re-use of environmental 3D models as exhibition space and new illumination metadata elements for designing light sources that affect the exhibitions' ambient light. New user-to-object interaction patterns for navigation aids and information visualization are described such that content creators can decide how supplementary material and contextual information are accessed and presented. In addition, we present the re-use and linking of open data collections, documentation and artworks using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH).