Information for decision makers that need to decide whether to create metadata for the purposes of discovery and use of educational resources by educators searching the Web. In particular: "Why create GEM metadata?"
June 30, 2003
Why should metadata be created for your educational resources?
Metadata can be a very cost-effective means to organizing and documenting your educational resources. This document provides several reasons why metadata should be created for your resources.
The main purpose of metadata is as follows:
Creating metadata is important because metadata facilitates the discovery of relevant information and resources, digital and non-digital. Metadata helps identify resources, distinguishes among dissimilar resources together, allow resources to be found by relevant criteria, and give location information.1
Metadata promotes interoperability if accompanied by careful mapping of data elements and cross walking standards. Interoperability allows multiple systems to exchange data with minimal loss of content and functionality, regardless of different hardware and software platforms, data structures, and interfaces. The use of metadata allows resources to be searched seamlessly across networks through crosswalks and shared transfer protocols.2
Metadata ensures that resources will be accessible in the future. Certain metadata efforts are focused on the long-term preservation of digital information. Special information is needed to track lineage of a digital object, to document its behavior to detail its physical characteristics and to record preservation decisions such as migration and emulation issues.3
Metadata can provide persistent and unique digital identification that assists in differentiating one object from another. These standard numbers or elements validate information and assist in locating and uniquely identifying the work or object to which the metadata refers.4
Metadata also documents and tracks the layers of rights and reproduction that exist for digital objects and their multiple versions, and the authenticity of version and provenance. Donor requirements, privacy concerns and propriety rights also can be captured through metadata.5
Metadata organizes information. In the print and digital environments, metadata provides the efficient, accurate retrieval and precision of information to the user. Especially in the digital environment, where web-based resources are growing exponentially, metadata provides the key to value-based searching already found in information centers such as libraries and archives.6
Problems with polysemy (words with multiple meaning, synonymy) can all be alleviated by the proper application of metadata, either manually or through selected harvesting. Well-formed metadata is the most efficient and effective tool for managing and finding objects in the complex information spaces that users now encounter on the Internet.7
Why is metadata important?
Increased accessibility: Effectiveness of searching can be significantly enhanced through the existence of rich consistent metadata. Metadata makes it possible to search across multiple collections or to create virtual collections from materials that are distributed across several repositories, but only if the descriptive metadata is the same or can be mapped across each site.8
Retention of context: Metadata plays a critical role in documenting and maintaining those relationships, as well as in indicating the authenticity, structural integrity of information objects.9
Expanding use: Metadata can document changing uses if systems and content, and that information can be in turn fed back into systems development decisions. Well-structured metadata can also facilitate an almost infinite number of ways to search for information, present results, and even manipulate information objects without compromising their integrity.10
Multi-visioning: The existence of information and cultural objects in digital form has heightened interest in the ability to create multiple and variant versions of those objects. This process may be as simple as creating both a high-resolution copy for preservation or scholarly research purposes and a low-resolution thumbnail image that can be rapidly transferred over the network for quick reference purposes.
Metadata links the multiple versions and captures what is the same and what is different about each version.11
Legal Issues: Metadata allows repositories to track the many layers of rights and reproduction information that exist for information objects and their multiple versions.
Preservation: If digital information objects that are currently being created are to have a chance of surviving migrations through successive generations of computer hardware and software, or removal to entirely new delivery systems, they will need metadata that enables them exist independently of the system that is currently being used to store and retrieve them.12
System improvement and economics: Benchmark technical data, much of which can be collected automatically by a computer, is necessary to evaluate and refine systems in order to make them more effective and efficient from a technical stand point.13
Why Educational Metadata
Metadata in education is a description of learning objects (such as courses, subjects learning materials etcetera). Educational resources, such as lesson plans, distance education curriculum, and curriculum standards documentation, are increasingly accessed electronically through education digital libraries and online catalogs. 14
Information retrieval: The interchange of learning resources such as lesson plans can be accomplished more effectively when resources are described in a uniform manner.15
Developers of educational materials want to connect users with useful content. They want a more intimate relationship with the user and their classroom. They want to make connections that are appropriate for the subject you teach the age of your students, your budget, and a host of other considerations that don't enter into most other e-commerce transactions taking place on the commercial internet.16
Content: Many of the educational projects dealing with Internet resources are discipline- specific and developed for a target audience. The assignment of appropriate subjects, topics, and keywords facilitates the ability of the resource to be discovered and used by the appropriate target audience. 17
Access: Access identifies who has permission to use a collection of resources, and is often related to content. The evolving Internet-based educational terrain includes local, statewide, national, and international access. With international access, there are issues of multilingual metadata and metadata localization, and with various user audiences, there are different degrees of granularity in terms of description. Overall, metadata standards permit Internet-based educational resources to be accessed and used within their proper context.18
Modeling: Educational resources are often distributed because of "economy, access, and collaboration". Metadata allows searching across several educational projects. 19
Why GEM Metadata
GEM metadata is based on the fifteen Dublin Core elements, a widely implemented and formally endorsed standard. There currently exist 21 GEM Metadata elements that are easy to use. GEM provides a metadata creation and editing tool (GEMCat). GEM metadata can also be generated from database collections. As an added bonus, GEM provides one-on-one assistance to members who want to create GEM metadata for The Gateway.
GEM metadata makes it possible for a centralized repository of information to be created through the use of GEM metadata tags. By using GEM metadata to describe educational resources, a consistent means for searching across educational websites can be provided. The following sites use GEM metadata to organize and provide access to their educational resources:
- The Educator's Reference Desk: Lesson Plans:
>http://www.eduref.org/Virtual/Lessons/index.shtml - Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN) Teachers' Center:
> http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/English/Teacher/index.html - Federal Resources for Education Excellence (FREE):
> http://www.ed.gov/free/ - The Gateway:
> http:/www.thegateway.org/ - Marco Polo search engine:
> http://www.marcopolo-education.org/home.aspx - NASA Space Science Education Resource Directory:
> http://teachspacescience.stsci.edu - Thinkport lessons, activities, and projects:
> http://www.thinkport.org/classroom/lessons/default.tp
In conclusion, there are many cost effective benefits to creating metadata for your educational resources. Metadata can improve access to your educational resources. It can help to organize your resources both internally and for external users, so it can efficiently be located and retrieved. Metadata that conforms to a recognized standard such as Dublin Core (including GEM), IEEE LOM, IMS, or SCORM promotes interoperability - once created, your metadata can be used by several systems with the creation of crosswalks and mappings. Metadata can also document administrative information, such as ownership and intellectual property rights.
- Library Technology Reports. September-October 2002.
- Ibid
- Ibid
- Ibid
- Ibid
- Ibid
- Ibid
- Gilliland-Swetland, Anne J. "Setting the Stage." Introduction to Metadata: Pathways to Digital Information. Los Angeles. California: Getty Information Institute, 1998, 18 April 2003.
- Ibid
- Ibid
- Ibid
- Ibid
- Ibid
- Bella Markus, "Educational Metadata." International Federation of Surveyors, 2000. Accessed 15 April, 2003.
- ICT Advice Retrieved May 5,2003
- Tickner, Marilyn and Barkhouse, Nancy. "A GEM of a Resource: The Gateway to Educational Materials." Retrieved April 22 2003.
- Jane Greenberg, Phd., ed., Metadata and Organizing Educational Resources on the Internet. Haworth Information Press, 2000. New York. 2-3.
- Ibid, p.8
- Ibid, p.4
Bibliography
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Berners-Lee, Tim. The Semantic Web. Accessed 3/24/2003.
Calhoun, Karen. 2002. "Special section: metadata." Library Collections, Acquisitions, and Technical Services Volume 26, Issue 3, Autumn: 195-197.
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Christensen, Deborah. 1999. "Golden Retrievers." School Library Journal v. 45 no. 11 (Nov):38-41.
ISO Standard 15836-2003 Dublin Core. February 2003.
NISO Standard Z39.85-2001 Dublin Core. September 2001.
Geisler, Gary et al. Creating Virtual Collections in Digital Libraries: Benefits and Implementation Issues. Accessed 02/18/2003.
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Gilliland-Swetland, Anne J.1998. "Setting the Stage." Introduction to Metadata: Pathways to Digital Information. Accessed 4/18/2003. Los Angeles. California: Getty Information Institute
Greenberg, Jane, Phd. ed. 2000. Metadata and Organizing Educational Resources on the Internet. New York: The Haworth Press.
Markus,Bela. Educational Metadata. Accessed 04/17/2003.
Milstead, Jessica and Susan Feldman. 1999. "Metadata: Cataloging by Any Other Name."Information Today. Accessed 3/27/2003.
Tickner, Marilyn and Nancy Barkhouse. 2001. "A GEM of a Resource: The Gateway to Educational Materials."Information Today.
What is Metadata? What are the benefits? Accessed 3/27/2003.
