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#9 Configurable Metadata

#9 Configurable Metadata

Jun 16, 2017

Institutions

Cornell - Lynette

* Project to create collections; Each collection should have additional metadata fields for that project
* Different fields by type
* Fedora 4

University of Alberta - Matthew

* Very specific metadata for their technical reports; Theses need different data
* Fedora 4

Indiana University - Daniel

* Implemented flexible metadata; Randall gave a talk at HydraConnect 2015 (link please)
* Most on Fedora 3

University of Notre Dame - Jeremy

* Thinking of platonic form of metadata; Yet each object is its own thing
* Fedora 3

Oregon State - Ryan

* Similar needs to the above; Not all fields are applicable to collections
* Editing templates per collection
* Fedora 3

Stanford - Joe

* Lots of legacy data; In deep with lots of data
* Multiple inputs - Administrative interface, self-deposit interface
* Perhaps copied code
* Fedora 3

UC San Diego - David

* We have monstrous amounts of metadata that can be applied to all objects
* Certain objects can have a subset of those fields
* Custom repository

Concerns

  • Concern with renaming metadata field under a new name

    • How do we make data migrations

    • Has metadata declaration if you allow a form driven interface

  • By Collection (User Collection / Admin Set)

  • Concerns for flexible metadata

  • Discussion about longitudinal stewardship of data

  • If we are going to configure this how would we go about doing this

  • Integration with class definitions that inherit from ActiveFedora

  • External configuration file; A schema.rb if you will; Or many configurations

  • Persist configuration in Fedora; the master copy is Fedora

  • Persist the configuration in a database

  • Configurable at runtime vs. boot time

  • Is the "metadata schema" an application or is part of the data and object

  • We need schema enforcement of the configuration

  • Repeating class definitions (for slight variations) is indicative of a problem; We shouldn't be doing that.

  • Discussion concerning I18n and how to represent this information

  • Configuration for terms/predicates should include I18n keys

Composition

By focusing on modeling predicates (the atoms of our objects), we can compose molecules. If a new predicate comes along, if we use a common configuration (and interface) we can share rendering strategies for predicates.

How do we combine configurations; Simple union as per order of application's configuration lookup.

Design Notes