Project Information. EDINA, University of Edinburgh Christine Rees Sheila Fraser

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1 Project Acronym - Project Title Project Information Scoping Study: Aggregations of Metadata for Images and Time-based Media Start Date June 2010 End Date 17 September 2010 Lead Institution Project Director Project Manager & contact details Partner Institutions - Project Web URL Programme Name (and number) Programme Manager EDINA, University of Edinburgh Christine Rees Sheila Fraser sheila.fraser@ed.ac.uk Resource Discovery Programme Andy McGregor Document Title Reporting Period - Author(s) & project role Project Plan Sheila Fraser Document Name Date 12/07/2010 Filename ITBM Metadata Aggregation Scoping Plan v1.0 URL - Access Project and JISC internal General dissemination Document History Version Date Comments 0.1 July 2010 Draft 1.0 July 2010 Release version

2 Overview of Project 1. Background Recent work has been undertaken by the Resource Discovery Task Force to develop a vision of having a collaborative, aggregated and integrated resource discovery and delivery framework 1. This will establish the framework for a shared UK resource discovery infrastructure to support research and learning, to which libraries, archives, museums and other resource providers can contribute open metadata for access and reuse. JISC has supported a number of projects and service in relation to aggregation of metadata including: Bibliographic metadata aggregation through services such as the Serials Union Catalogue 2 (SUNCAT) and Copac 3 Aggregation of metadata from institutional repositories. The RepUK project has been exploring how to position the aggregation of data to support research and development generally in the fields of metadata and repositories 4. It has developed a regularly harvested prototype metadata store to provide subsets of the aggregated metadata to other projects, together with a business intelligence analysis capability. Still image and time based media metadata through projects such as the Visual Sound and Materials (VSM) Portal 5. This scoping study is a part of the JISC and RLUK Resource Discovery Vision, which was launched at the Survive or Thrive conference on 8 th and 9 th June The project seeks to build on previous work to scope the issues and barriers to making available an aggregation of open and shareable metadata of images and time based media, and to identify potential opportunities and benefits that such an aggregation would provide. 2. Aims and Objectives The scoping study aims to explore what it means to have aggregations of images and time based media. This type of metadata aggregation is regarded as having complexity and so may prove difficult to aggregate. It will aim to answer the following questions: What collections should be considered? A range of multimedia collections might be considered: JISC has previously supported work in relation to digitisation of still images and time based media through the JISC Digitisation Programme (such as the British Library Archival Sound Recordings, the Oxford First World War Poetry Archive and NewsFilm Online); HE/FE institutions can hold their own collections or include multimedia content in their institutional repository. Museums and Archives may have collections of interest for teaching and research. Should there be any restrictions on what collections are in scope, say, based on subject coverage? Does a digital asset need to be available, or is metadata referring to physical objects useful? What are the metadata considerations? What profile is minimal? What information must be supplied (mandatory) and what desirable? Should the aggregation service manipulate supplied metadata to fit the specified aggregation profile? Are there issues related to use of different subject terms/vocabularies? What, or who, would use such a metadata aggregation serve? Would those providing metadata want to access the full aggregation in order to enhance their own collections (i.e. as a user of the full aggregation)? Existing service providers may already carry out their own aggregation of metadata, what requirements would need to be met in order that they could switch to use a central aggregation? Other aggregators might also wish to take a feed (e.g. Europeana)? How to achieve indexing by search engines? How can the metadata be gathered and shared? Page 2 of 9

3 What infrastructure and harvesting/access mechanisms will be needed to enable the widest range of contribution and use of the metadata, and provide the flexibility potential service providers might need? What methods for gathering and updating metadata should be supported? Should there be a user interface onto the aggregation, or solely APIs and support for standards such as OAI-PMH and SRU? Could the aggregation be provided as linked data? Is there a role for RSS/Atom to provide feeds from the aggregation? How should the aggregation be curated/updated? Are there any IPR, contractual, policy issues that must be resolved? What restrictions might there be on use of the metadata by those using the aggregation? How would these need to be conveyed to a user of a service making use of the aggregation? Would agreements need to be established between/with the collection owner/service provider? How should take down requests be managed? The study will aim to give a good understanding of current activity and issues around aggregation of metadata from image and time based media through exploring these questions. This exploration should also provide an insight into the following: The benefits of, and opportunities for, aggregations of metadata describing images and time based media The barriers to having open and shareable metadata for these resources. And provide sufficient information to: Describe some scenarios in which aggregations of metadata for images and time based media could be useful or required. Where feasible within the project time constraints, consideration will also be given to: The tension between web and academic sector standards: web standards such as RESTful APIs, RSS and ATOM are being used worldwide; OIA-PMH and SRU are commonly used in the academic sector, but is there a risk that content and services could be excluded by not exploring and exploiting the web standards? The focus of the aggregation of metadata rather than the user interface onto the aggregation: is it desirable to separate the work on the aggregation from the work on the user interface and services that access it, or is it possible for them to co-exist together? The normalisation and enrichment of metadata: at which level does it happen, if any? At the local level of the metadata owner, the level of the aggregator, or the level of the service provider? What kind of enrichment can be done in the aggregation, and could it be fed back to enhance the metadata at other levels? Linked data: could aggregations be exploited more effectively by being made available in linked data format? 3. Overall Approach The proposed scoping study will consist of three stages: Desk research Further information gathering from contact with institutions, collection owners, and providers (or potential providers but these would obviously be harder to identify) of service onto multimedia content A final report. Page 3 of 9

4 This approach is summarised in the following figure, together with approximate timelines: 2010 June July August September Project Management Stage 1: Desk Research & Survey Preparation Stage 2: Conduct Survey Figure 1: Aggregation Scoping Stages and Approximate Timeline The initial desk research stage would seek to: Stage 3: Final Report Understand related activity and work in the area of sharing, re-using and aggregating metadata describing image and time based media, Determine whether related activity in open bibliographic data is relevant and where there may already have been some lessons learnt. Identify an initial profile of the types of collections of images and time based media that should be considered for inclusion in a metadata aggregation; identify metadata issues and possible approaches/standards Identify some initial potential uses of such an aggregation. The detailed investigation would draw on existing contacts in institutions and other organisations, plus suggestions from the members of the Resource Discovery Taskforce, and known service providers to better understand the current situation with collections of images and time based media and their associated metadata. This would be conducted through an online survey or a number of telephone interviews. There is a concern that an online survey will not have enough people interested, or with enough expertise to respond effectively. Phone interviews are expected to gain more valuable information and insight into the questions. The approach is that an online survey may as well be offered, since the questions will be formed for interview. The final stage would be preparing a final report that would analyse and summarise the information gathered in the previous phases, evaluate and comment on the feasibility and viability of metadata aggregation for this type of content, highlighting any particular barriers to offering a service. Ideally, if time allows, this will be prepared in the form of a draft report that will be circulated to interested stakeholders with opportunity to review and comment prior to release of the final report. 4. Project Outputs This project will develop the following deliverables: Project plan Survey / interview question responses Final report. The project will also support building the following knowledge and experience: Page 4 of 9

5 Understanding of previous work in this area in relation to images and time based media Awareness of the issues related to metadata describing images and time based media Scenarios in which there could be a benefit to the wider academic community of aggregating metadata from images and time based media. 5. Project Outcomes This project is expected to enable the following outcomes: Understanding of the challenges and opportunities in relation to aggregations of open metadata for images and time based media View of where value could be gained in future for institutions, end-users and service providers from aggregating metadata on image and time based media. 6. Stakeholder Analysis Stakeholder Interest / Stake Importance JISC Innovation Funder High RLUK Joint collaborator, with JISC, High in Resource Discovery Taskforce Service providers (including JISC National Creation of new services, or High Data Centres, commercial providers, HE/FE institutions) continuation of existing services, onto the metadata aggregation Librarians and information professionals at Support staff: intermediary High UK HE and FE Institutions Moving and still image collection owners & other providers of image and time based media Use of, and access to their metadata High JISC Film & Sound Think Tank Community representatives High Researchers, teachers and learners at UK Users of services onto the High HE and FE Institutions metadata aggregation UKOLN Research organisation working in the area of metadata aggregation; technical advice to JISC High JISC Digital Media, BUFVC Advisory Service Medium JISC Collections Licensing agency Medium British Film Institute, BFI Collection owner; advisory; provider of multimedia services Medium HE Academy (particularly the subject centres) 7. Risk Analysis Education advisor; access to subject-based groups of HE users Medium Risk Probability Severity Score Action to Prevent / Manage Risk (1-5) (1-5) (PxS) Staffing Those with the required technical and legal experience for the proposed work have been identified: key EDINA staff are in place and will be available, or consultancy agreed. Organisational Project management structure to be established; mechanisms to support communication will be implemented. Technical ability to run online survey Check access to online survey providers and costs. Page 5 of 9

6 Risk External contacts being unavailable when needed for interviews/survey Probability (1-5) Severity (1-5) Score (PxS) Action to Prevent / Manage Risk The scoping is to be carried out over a short time period, with it being critical that input from stakeholders is provided promptly. Identify contacts as soon as possible and schedule meetings before interview/survey questions are finalised. Legal IPR and contract issues regarding metadata for collections held elsewhere will require investigation. 8. Standards This project will ascertain metadata standards that are used by survey participants, and consider whether there should be support for standards such as OAI-PMH and SRU in an aggregation of metadata. 9. Technical Development No technical development will be involved at this stage. 10. Intellectual Property Rights The outputs of this project will be documents: the project plan, the survey or interview questions and responses and the final report. These are deliverables of the project and will be provided to JISC on schedule. In accordance with the grant letter, IP will remain with the University of Edinburgh while the documents will be made available to interested stakeholders throughout the UK HE/FE community via the project website. At present, the project team foresees no need to use materials for which IP is owned by third parties. Project Resources 11. Project Partners A Senior Research Fellow, James Stewart, from the Institute for Social Studies of Science, Technology and Innovation at the University of Edinburgh will be working on the project. 12. Project Management It will be reviewed in consultation with the JISC Programme Manager. The project will be conducted in accordance with the plan; any proposed deviation will be agreed by the EDINA Project Director and the JISC Programme Manager. Exceptions/risks will be reported to the Director with a view to adjusting the plan to accommodate these whilst still meeting the project deadlines within budget. This is a short scoping project; there will be no Management Board or Steering Committee. The review of the final report will be done through making the draft report available on JISC Press or EDINA s website, whereby individual paragraphs can be made available for comment by interested parties. This means that the document does not need to be updated to incorporate feedback; rather the feedback and responses are live on the internet and can be printed as such. Status updates will be given via a monthly phone call between the JISC Programme Manager and the EDINA Project Manager. The project team comprises the following: Project Management Consultation Work Sheila Fraser , Sheila.Fraser@ed.ac.uk Leah Halliday, Leah.Halliday@ed.ac.uk; James Stewart, J.K.Stewart@ed.ac.uk and Caroline Ingram, caroline@csiconsultancy.co.uk with contributions from Sheila Fraser, Christine Rees, Christine.Rees@ed.ac.uk, Rick Loup Richard.Loup@ed.ac.uk, Page 6 of 9

7 The project has no training needs. Tim Stickland, and Ben Soares, 13. Programme Support The project team would value support from the Programme Manager to facilitate liaison with contacts throughout the UK academic community, and other others working in the area - JISC projects and other groups beyond the UK. 14. Dissemination Plan Timing Dissemination Activity Audience Purpose Key Message Autumn 10 Publication of article in EDINA Newsline of the results of this project. Findings of scoping report. Autumn 10 Various news and blog items e.g. on JISC website, JIBS blog, 15. Exit and Sustainability Plans Site representatives at EDINA subscriber institutions (UK HE/FE) Librarians and other interested parties in UK HE/FE To publicise the work within the potential user community. To publicise the work within the potential user community. Findings of scoping report. Project Outputs Action for Take-up & Embedding Action for Exit Project report Will be delivered to JISC and made available directly from EDINA to interested parties. Learning within project team Learning 16. Workpackages Project team will present findings to colleagues within EDINA to ensure that future projects benefit from learning. Project team will also report through EDINA Newsline, and on the Project Website. Will be disseminated If appropriate (depending on output from scoping), proposal to JISC for development of service or further investigation for UK HE/FE. Page 7 of 9

8 2010 June July August September Project Planning Risk, Issue & Project Management Project Management Issue Draft Plan for Review Review & understand related work Identify issues, approaches, stakeholders & collection types Develop questions & project summary Test & iterate questions Desk Research & Survey Preparation Arrange interviews Prepare survey Contact Stakeholders Conduct & document interviews Open survey for stakeholders Close feedback Denotes task to be confirmed during previous stage Analyse Responses Final Report Draft Final Report Issue Draft for Review Respond to Feedback Final Report Figure 2: Project Workpackage and Plan Overview Page 8 of 9

9 Project start date: mid-june 2010 Project completion date: 17 September 2010 Duration: 3 months Project Work Packages 1. Project Management The objective of this work package is to manage the project effectively. This will involve planning and day to day management of the project and EDINA staff and consultants providing contributions to the scoping work, liaising with stakeholders and tracking and reporting on risks, issues and progress. 2. Desk Research & Survey/Interview Preparation The objective of this work package is to gain an understanding of the work that has been completed to date, and what the most appropriate survey questions are to enable answering of the questions described in the Aims and Objectives. It is also to determine the nature of the survey/interview, to identify the target audience best suited to answering the questions, and to initiate contact in expectation of the forthcoming consultation. 3. Conduct Interviews/Survey The objective of this work package is to collect information from a range of stakeholders to better understand the current situation in relation to aggregations of images and time based media and the challenges and opportunities presented. This is expected to be done through an online survey supplemented with a number of phone interviews with key contacts to enable deeper questioning and understanding, or through phone interviews only. The nature of the survey will be determined in the previous work package once the questions have been defined. 4. Final Report The objective of this work package is to collate the information gathered in the previous phases, analyse it to identify key themes and trends and answer as far as possible the questions described in the Aims and Objectives section. This will be collected into the format of a final report that JISC may use to support decisions on future work with aggregation of images and time based media. Page 9 of 9