Re: Islandora/Working With Metadata Standards

[Don]

Hi Nick:
It would be great to see students learning about and using Islandora.

Islandora basically supports any kind of XML-based metadata schema.  You would build your form using the XML Formbuilder Module using the .xsd as a guide. We've worked with a variety of schema - MODS, DC, MADS, EAC-CPF, DarwinCore, PBCore - so there are a number of base forms available for those wanting to learn.  Typically most descriptive metadata formats would be crosswalked to DublinCore and that's accomplished with xslts ... again ... many have been built or could be used as starting points for projects. I'd recommend you visit the sandbox.islandora.ca site, log in, and have a look at http://sandbox.islandora.ca/admin/content/xml/form ... there are a number of MODS forms there that you can review. As I was learning how to use the formbuilder I created a series of videos ... not sure if they are still relevant, but they will give you a sense of the form builder tool - http://help.islandora.ca/formbuilder

If you develop curriculum, please consider sharing that back to the community. We'd be happy to host it I'm sure. If you need additional help, please let us know.

Regards,
Don
Digital Initiatives & Systems Librarian, Robertson Library, UPEI

On Thursday, August 2, 2012 1:37:15 PM UTC-3, Nick Steffel wrote:

Hi all,

I work with a library science department that's looking at potentially using Islandora as part of courses related to metadata and digital collections/archives. I was curious if I could solicit a few opinions on a question that has come up as I've looked at it and talked with a few people who are using it.

Most of our courses involve working with a variety of different metadata standards. Islandora supports multiple standards, but I'm curious exactly how easy it is to add additional ones in. Can you just import an .xsd into it somehow or is it a more involved process of creating it manually? Since Dublin Core seems to sort of underly everything, do you need to create a crosswalk for that new standard to Dublin Core as well? Bearing in mind our students will not have a great deal of exposure to Islandora, I'm just curious how easy tasks like this would be to explain and how reasonable it would be to expect students to be able to pick it up and run with it for their projects.

Any/all thoughts would be welcomed. Thanks!

Kind regards,

Nick Steffel
St. Catherine University, Library and Information Science Program

[Robin Dean]

Hi Nick,

We have a custom MODS form in Islandora for our set of local best practice MODS elements. Adding a new MODS element involves the following steps (and skills) in our setup:

1. Add MODS field in the XML Form Builder in Islandora (xml, xpath)
2. Add MODS field to our custom content model display (xml, xpath, access to Fedora)
3. Customize the mappings in the MODS to DC crosswalk associated with the form (xml, xsl)
--This isn't always necessary. We started with the default LOC MODS to DC transformation and had to make a few changes. We use this crosswalk primarily to generate DC for OAI harvesting.
4. Add the MODS field to the solr search index and results (xml, xsl, solr, access to files on server)
--If you are only indexing/displaying DC and have a crosswalk in place you may be able to skip this step.

As far as I know, there isn't an easy way to turn an existing XSD into an Islandora form. This would be a great feature!

I'm guessing it would be complicated to do this because the XML files behind the Islandora forms contain a lot of elements beyond metadata mappings that are required to make the web-based forms work. For example, the XML underlying a MODS "Notes" textarea in one of our forms looks like this:

-----------------------------------------------------------------
<element name="notes">
<properties>
<type>textarea</type>
<access>TRUE</access>
<required>FALSE</required>
<title>Notes</title>
<tree>TRUE</tree>
<actions>
<create>
<path>/mods:mods</path>
<context>document</context>
<schema></schema>
<type>element</type>
<prefix>NULL</prefix>
<value>note</value>
</create>
<read>
<path>/mods:mods/mods:note</path>
<context>document</context>
</read>
<update>
<path>self::node()</path>
<context>self</context>
</update>
<delete>NULL</delete>
</actions>
</properties>
<children></children>
</element>

------------------------------------------------------------------

And that's one of the simpler examples. The XML form builder is a lot easier than trying to work directly with the form XML above, but some knowledge of XML/XPATH is still required even for the form builder.

Best,
Robin

[Robin Dean]

Don wrote:

 

“We've worked with a variety of schema - MODS, DC, MADS, EAC-CPF, DarwinCore, PBCore - so there are a number of base forms available for those wanting to learn.  Typically most descriptive metadata formats would be crosswalked to DublinCore and that's accomplished with xslts ... again ... many have been built or could be used as starting points for projects.”

 

Don, are the forms for these various schemas and the xslts available online somewhere? Particularly the non-MODS ones? We would love to see what other sites have done with non-MODS schemas.

 

Best,

Robin

[Nick Steffel]

Hi Robin,

Thanks for the added insight -- and anticipating my next question! If there isn't some sort of online repository for the schemas/crosswalks people have already written, that sounds like a great idea to consider.

I'm going to talk with the faculty member interested in Islandora and share what I've heard here. Thanks again for your insights.

Kind regards,

Nick Steffel

[Jonathan Green]

We've been talking about creating a collection of forms. The ones we have currently collected are here (really they just link to the solution packs):
https://github.com/Islandora/islandora_ingest_forms

There is a readme, linking to the forms in the existing solution packs. I know Donald was talking about adding more to this git repo.

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[David Wilcox]

This one is on my to-do list this week. I'm going to add all the forms
I know about, and if anyone has any forms they'd like to contribute
you can send them to me (dwi...@upei.ca).

David