Brainstorming on METS Profile Revision

Discussion for METS Board Meeting at Fall DLF 2007
November 8, 2007

Questions to address:

I. Exploration of what, who, why to discuss the METS Profile schema

A. Review of why the Board has felt it useful to re-assess the METS Profile schema (from May 2007 mtg in Germany)

• Difficulty in using profiles to harmonize profiles built on separate implementations (Harvard & Indiana?)
• Call for “machine-actionable”
• Efforts by others to compel conformance, and thus greater chances for interoperability for sharing content & resources
• Others?
• If they are documents, they need better formatting than <p>
• What happens when metadata schemas get upgraded? There needs to be some better versioning mechanism?
• URI is not assigned until after registration
• Not modular (might want to reuse structure, but don't like the descriptive standards)

B. If main purpose of METS Profiles is to facilitate interoperability, what does interoperability mean? In what situations do we know that we’ve succeeded?

• Definitions of “interoperability”
a. The ability of two or more systems or components to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged IEEE 90.
b. In healthcare, interoperability is the ability of different information technology systems and software applications to communicate, to exchange data accurately, effectively, and consistently, and to use the information that has been exchanged.
c. From TELCERT “E-learning systems are defined to be interoperable when they can exchange the necessary data, using a common system infrastructure resulting in the expected end-system behavior. Two are systems are interoperable or not.” (July 31, 2004)
d. From McLean/Lynch paper on interoperability what’s needed to interoperate technically between digital libraries and learning management systems:
i. Modeling learning objects/learning activities and information assets (7.2)
ii. Identifiers of various kinds including persistent identifiers, persistent locators, and resolving services related to each (7.3)
iii. Necessity to provide interoperability among different “systems” within institutional environments, e.g., OPAC to OPAC, page-turner to page-turner, digitization lab to web “publication”, course materials to IR

C. How do METS profiles succeed in facilitating interoperability?
a. What specific elements or attributes of the METS schema are constrained by the METS Profile schema?
b. What specific elements or attributes of the METS schema are extended by the METS Profile schema?

D. How do METS profiles fail in facilitating interoperability?
a. What specific elements or attributes of the METS schema are not constrained by the METS Profile schema?
b. What specific elements or attributes of the METS schema are extended by the METS Profile schema?

E. What does “machine actionable” mean?

a. Coding triggered by use of a given element or attribute and/or its value, e.g.,
b. Actions or behaviors triggered by certain values
c. Exceptions thrown by various requirements (elements or attributes not present, datatypes incorrect, use of uncontrolled terms?)
d. Requirements for structuring of components, filenames
• No programming required, just drop it in to your application and presto, it works!
• Validation
• Display
• Extract metadata, index contents
• Create / export METS matching the profile
• transform METS from one profile to another

•  
*F. What is relationship of “machine actionable” to “conformance testing”?*

a. TELCERT work associates the two and provides a means to facilitate the latter by means of building “application profiles” for more general specifications (such as IMS CP – or perhaps, METS)
b. Suite of tools to achieve the conformance testing: See “State of the Art Report on Testing,” July 31, 2004: http://www.opengroup.org/telcert/documents/TELCERT_State_of_the_Art_Report.pdf, pp. 3-5, Executive Summary.
i. SchemaProf(iling) tool (create an application profile), SchemaTransform Tool (transform your application profile into modified, localized schemas), Content Re-engineering Tool (creating & adapting content & services to be conformant to a profile), TELCERT Test System (testing for conformance in dvlpmnt & certification)
ii. What’s needed to test interoperability from TELCERT POV:
1. info model (expressed as UML)
2. Binding of the info model (XML)
3. Building constraints, rules for, & extensions of the binding to develop profile (XML Schema & Schematron for rules)
4. Creation of a test set to test conformance (including transformation rules)

II. What does this mean for us?

A. What should be our focus?
B. What to do next?
C. How?
D. Who to take the lead?