A simpler format for OLAC vocabularies and schemes

[Gary Holton]

On Mon, 16 Sep 2002 17:39:54 EDT, Steven Bird <sb at UNAGI.CIS.UPENN.EDU>
wrote:
>--
>
>So, what do you think?  Do you agree with our proposals for
>(i) a syntactic simplification in our XML representation, and
>(ii) switching OLAC vocabularies from being centrally validated
>standards to recommendations?  We would welcome your feedback.
>


Dear Steven & Gary,

I haven't had much time to digest your proposal, but my initial reaction is
very positive. Regarding (i), it is clear that a syntactic simplification
is needed. I for one have never been able to keep straight refinements vs.
schemes, and I don't think I'm alone here. And as you point out (ii), the
real issue should be not whether a particular refinement (and associated
vocabulary) has been officially adopted (mandated?), but rather whether a
such a refinement is useful to the community. We can debate ontologies, but
it is more difficult to debate usefulness without actually implementing a
refinement. Your proposal would permit refinements ("extensions") to fit
the needs of the community, so that useful solutions could evolve.

I have often approached the metadata issue by trying to imagine what types
of refinements and vocabularies would be useful to the end user. The
difficulty is that we don't know enough about how the user will be
searching, what they will be searching for, and what types of search
facilities they will have. The best we can do at this point is make an
educated guess and then watch closely to see how the refinements and
vocabularies are actually used. That said, I think we have some very good
guesses already and will certainly be able to recommend best practices by
December. However, if we lock in the vocabularies then most archives will
continue to have to support both an OLAC schema and a user-defined schema
(as you point out). This would essentially remove the data provider from
the loop, in that user-defined schemas would be viewed as idiosyncratic and
non-standard. Allowing user-defined "extensions" would encourage innovation
on the part of both data and service providers--innovation mediated by the
end user.

Any reactions from others?

Gary Holton