[OAI-implementers] XML Schema for OAI compliance with NSDL harvesting

[Rachel Heery]

On Thu, 13 Dec 2001, Carl Lagoze wrote:

> - The latest DC thinking now includes the notion of "application
> profiles", saying that a "metadata record" may include dc elements (all
> optional, all repeatable) that can be mixed and matched with metadata
> elements from one or more other metadata vocabularies.  The nature of
> the mixing is, I believe, unspecified by DC - i.e., the application
> profile notion may allow for a dc element to be nested within the value
> structure of an element from another vocabulary (such as the dc-ed
> vocabulary mentioned in Tim's note).  For example, imagine a metadata
> record such as:

Just for some background.... within the DCMI community, and within the
SCHEMAS project, we have found the concept of application profiles useful
to understand the way standard data element sets are implemented 'in
practice'. An application profile is understood in this context as a
schema optimised in its content for a particular application or domain
i.e. a schema defined by a 'community of use' to specify the data elements
(terms) used by their application.

In reality we find that implementations use standard metadata element sets
(like DC, IMS etc) in an application specific way. For example by
specifying some data elements are mandatory, some should use values taken
from a particular schema like Library of Congress subject headings etc,
some might even contain data elements from different namespaces.

Its significant to realise that the application profile is defined at the
schema level.. any instance metadata is then created 'in compliance' to
that schema. Within the context of SCHEMAS project we have experimented
with publishing application profiles as RDF schemas, and looked at sharing
schemas within a schema registry. [1]

For more info on application profiles see:

What terms does your metadata use? Application profiles as 
machine-understandable narratives
     T. Baker, M. Dekkers, R. Heery, M. Patel, G. Salokhe -November 2001 
     Journal of Digitial Information, Vol 2. Issue 2. 
     HTML: <URL:http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/Articles/v02/i02/Baker/>  

Rachel

1. http://www.schemas-forum.org/registry/desire/index.php3
 
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