Metadata Call 2022-04-26

Owned by Nora Zimmerman
Last updated: Apr 27, 2022
4 min read

Time: 2:00pm-3:00pm Eastern

Call-In Info: https://unc.zoom.us/j/211033358?pwd=WERUdnBWeHRqRVBRMmlOVWU3SlN0QT09

Community Notes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EuJPYQbCPmWQ6wEIoHb_jLDBoHkT4E08DyaLYl42jSg/edit?usp=sharing

 

Moderator(s): Nora Z. 

Notetaker: also Nora Z.

 

Attendees:

  • Julie Hardesty (Indiana University)

  • Nora Zimmerman (Lafayette College)

  • Cara Key (Oregon State University)

  • Annamarie Klose (Ohio State University)

  • Rob Kaufman (Scientist.com)


Agenda:

  • Subgroup Reports

    • URI Selection Working Group

      • Should this group go on hiatus? 

      • UOregon is working on a soft launch of their new platform schedule for July, so Ryan has limited availability at the present time.

      • Julie: may try meeting with Ryan Wick over the summer or in early Fall

  • Roadmaps Alignment Group Update (Annamarie Klose)

    • Last mtg was very brief, ICLA/CCLA requirements have been removed for the Samvera Community

    • Hyrax is currently looking at blacklight/bootstrap/Rails upgrades – this may have impacts on the OAI work? 

      • This is targeting version 7.0.x

  • Issues/Questions

    • Rob: there seems to be motivation for reigniting work on M3 and Houndstooth in several different sectors of the community 

      • The AllinsonFlex work, and Valkyrization work, are both in these directions.  

        • Three parts: React.js interface, dynamic schema editing, and schema versioning

        • Julie: IU is working on this at the Admin Set level as well

      • He has observed that Samvera metadata schema’s need for heavy-lifting developer labor is a major turn-off to many potential adopters

      • Coming out of the AllinsonFlex work, all of which relies on the M3/Houndstooth specification, there was a bit of discussion of the addition of ‘contexts’

        • Can contexts be added to the M3 spec, and how? 

      • Tamsin’s implementation of dynamic metadata in Hyrax 3, where they provide YAML schemas for worktypes, is a subset of the M3 spec

        • In proof-of-concept phase, which Tamsin is on parental leave

      • Annamarie: we did have potential DPLA mappings in the Hyrax 3 YAML

      • Enhancements could be made to the overriding specification in order to make it more broadly implementable, e.g. OAI mappings

      • A dynamic metadata configuration interface that could add Dublin Core and Qualified Dublin core fields, and set OAI mappings, would solve numerous community problems

      • If this were to be a WG, it would need to be developer-driven

      • Group agreed to add this topic to the agenda at our next meeting to continue the discussion

  • Project Sharing

  • Discussion Topics

    • OAI documentation collection

      • How is OAI-PMH connected to Hyrax / Hyku implementations in the community?

        • Annamarie – communicated with OhioHub to ask if ResourceSync is being used by anyone, and heard back that no one in OhioHub is using it in production

        • Rob – ATLA (conglomerate/consortium of ~20 organizations) had some movement towards potentially encouraging its use, but they determined that it is not widely used

          • Notch8 is involved in around 10 Hyku implementations; Bulkrax supports OAI import as a core feature. Used by 4 or 5 of their client repositories. Relies heavily on the ruby-oai gem. 

          • Theoretically XML could be generated and hosted on a dumb server and used to publish OAI metadata

          • Utilize ruby-oai gem on several blacklight/spotight projects that are not necessarily Samvera projects

          • In most of Notch8’s implementations of OAI, they enhance the bulkrax oai importer, specifically in relation to including the files themselves (stuffing them in either an inferred URL that relies on data in the OAI e.g. an ID field OR a Dublin core field).  This is used for importing data, not just for exposing it to harvesters

          • For example, a university is using this to expose data from one repository to two other services, as an import/roundtripping service

        • “Where the files go” does not seem to be part of the OAI specification, for either the thumbnails or the primary files

        • Best practice recommendations that includes reference to the files in the metadata records themselves would be helpful

        • Adding additional formats for the blacklight-oai is on Notch8’s roadmap, but it is hard partly because of also having to make changes to ruby-oai gem

        • If bulkrax is installed, ruby-oai is included, and there is an interface for mapping in your metadata fields in bulkrax

        • In Hyku, there is an interface for selecting metadata prefix and other customizable fields, and each tenant has a separate OAI feed that is somewhat sparsely populated.  Used in production by the British Library project, and by some other Ubiquity Press Hyku repositories

          • Previously, the blacklight-oai gem was only configurable at boot.  Due to the multi-tenant problem, Rob believes it is now possible to configure which fields get displayed at the OAI in a live fashion

        • The OAI feature appears to be something alongside Hyrax/Hyku, not out-of-the-box but using open source tools

        • Having Dublin Core harvesting out-of-the-box in the OAI feed would be very helpful

          • ArchiveSpace and ContentDM both have OAI feed mapping interfaces at the repository level 

        • blacklight-oai takes a search of the Solr index and maps those to OAI

        • UCLA oral history site is a pure blacklight app that uses OAI

        • Issue 3328 Make OAI-PMH support tested and clear

          • Hyku applies as an additional example 

        • There has been new information (from Ben Arminter) that there will be upcoming changes to the blacklight-oai and ruby-oai gems

          • He is prepping releases of ruby-oai (v1.2.0) and then two releases of blacklight_oai_provider (v7.0 and v7.15, pegged against blacklight releases) this week. 

        • Would be valuable in the documentation to make it clear that OAI-PMH can be used to expose and share data for harvesting, as well as for ingest, but they are two different tasks/projects

          • Also, to mention to users/prospective usersthat this feature does not ship out of the box, but rather is an additional implementation

        • What is British Library using their OAI feed to contribute to? 

        • Rob is willing to help with documentation, like making a demo video about OAI feature work in Hyku

        • The group agreed to digest this information and continue the discussion at our next meeting

 


Next call: May 24th, 2022 from 2-3pm EST