Multiple Perspectives on Metadata

Vienna 12/13 November 2009

Tomaž Erjavec: (Keynote) Metadata as a Strategy of domain-specific Content Modelling Intelligent storage and management of digital resources have become a key issue in all scientific disciplines. Concurrently, the term “metadata” itself has evolved beyond the context of library science to describing general aspects of content modelling and semantisation of digital objects. The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) Guidelines are a formal specification and accompanying documentation defining a vocabulary of XML elements, meant for the annotation of texts for scholarly purposes. TEI is widely used for the encoding of texts in digital libraries, esp. those with complex annotations. A required part of every TEI-conformant document is its meta-data, i.e. the teiHeader element, with a rich and detailed structure. The talk illustrates our use of TEI, esp. the TEI header in the modelling of varied text types: digital manuscript editions, dictionaries and language corpora. The use of XML and TEI makes for a flexible and well-documented modelling framework, which can be easily integrated into Web based applications, with free text or complex metadata searches. Context: Due to ongoing digitization processes, the topic of structuring and modelling content is increasingly being discussed and new approaches are being developed. Digital Asset Management Systems support users in analyzing, retrieving, processing, filing and citing structured information sources. From a technological perspective, XML-based systems are particularly well-suited for flexible and metadata-enriched methods of asset storage: The primary data content is augmented with additional descriptive elements by making use of modelling standards and markup languages. This facilitaties a multifaceted digital representation of knowledge as well as data interoperability. Unlike other platforms (e.g. Content- or Learning Management Systems), Digital Asset Management Systems place importance on the sustainability of digital assets as well as flexible long-term accessibility and controlled authorization. The conference will investigate multiple approaches to metadata strategies and discuss how these can support digital edition and preservation projects. On the one hand, metadata hold well-structured administrative, descriptive, technical and long-term preservation information about assets, while on the other hand, they present a domain specific semantic relevance that is embedded in the content of an asset. The conference will cover a range of topics including: • Ontology based metadata specifications • Markup language based edition strategies • Metadata Quality Assurance • Metadata and IPR • Metadata harvesting protocols & incorporation

application/pdf