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IESR: Metadata

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IESR Entities and their Metadata Properties

The IESR holds information about:

  • Collections of information resources, the associated services that provide access to the collections, and the parties (aka agents) that own the collections and/or administer the services.
  • Transactional services, ie. those that provide functionality other than access to a collection, and the parties that adminster them.

Thus the entities within the IESR are collections, services and agents. Each of these has associated administrative metadata. The metadata is defined by the IESR Application Profile, along with its associated controlled lists.

The metadata for collections is based on RSLP Collection Description.

The metadata properties for services in the IESR are those needed for discovery. Further detailed information about the interface to a service, such as how to connect to it or the output formats it makes available, is held as a by-reference pointer (URL), for service types where this is needed. This pointer is a reference to an XML file with a schema appropriate for the service type.

IESR Entity Identification

Every entity registered in IESR is assigned a unique global identifier, using the PURL-based Object Identifier (POI) scheme. These global identifiers are unambiguous within the 'http' namespace, being based on the IESR domain. The remainder of the identifier is generated dynamically, based on the time and host machine process identifier, thus ensuring uniqueness. IESR identifiers are resolvable via PURL/POI and the IESR OpenURL Link-To Resolver.

IESR Metadata Discovery

Searching of the IESR is available via Z39.50 using Bib-1 attributes. The Application Profile indicates which properties are searchable and the particular Bib-1 attributes and index names associated with each searchable IESR metadata property.

IESR Metadata Output Format

Full IESR metadata records are available in XML, via Z39.50, OAI-PMH, and an OpenURL Link-To Resolver.

For collections the XML records supplied by the Z39.50 service are composite, consisting of: the collection metadata; metadata for all the services that provide access to the collection; and metadata for the associated parties. For a transactional service the IESR XML record includes the metadata for the single servce and metadata for associated administrators.

The OAI-PMH service and the OpenURL Link-To Resolver supply single entity XML records.

IESR Metadata Input

Metadata is created and submitted for individual entities, not as composite IESR records. IESR metadata input and updating is via the IESR Editor, a web form that has knowledge of the content of the registry and guides the metadata creator. Information about contributing records to IESR is given in the Be Included section of the IESR website. [In the interim before the input web form was available, IESR metadata records were created using provided templates (XML or Excel). Use of these templates is no longer supported.]

IESR Metadata Reviews and Versions

There have been several reviews of the IESR metadata since its original specification. The consequent changes to the metadata are listed at the begining of each of the review documents.

The IESR version naming policy for the metadata schema documents is described along with the Metadata Reviews list.

IESR Metadata Definitions, Examples and Templates

29 August 2006