Multi-purpose metadata for collections

Outline to the session

One of the RSLP projects highlighted the issue of copyright in the context of collection description. The RSLP schema recognises the rights issues in terms of the use and accessibility of a physical or digital collection but the schema does not include the administrative information as to who owns the copyright of the collection description metadata. This session examined the issue of copyright with regard to existing collection descriptions and reusability in a number of different contexts

The group identified 3 main areas that need to be addressed: -
1. Clarification of the rights and data protection issues associated with the creation, maintenance and sharing of CLDs. The work could feed into the drafting of "guidance notes". The notes should highlight the issues, offer advice where appropriate and reference relevant work that is currently investigating the much wider and complex issues of metadata rights.

2. The need to extend the RSLP application profile to include information about the collection description itself, which would include both "administrative metadata" e.g. the name of the original creator of the CLD and the date of creation, plus details of any changes to the CLD including date of amendment and who made the changes, and rights information.

3. Access Rights - CLDs are typically created within the context of a specific activity or project. Increasingly there may be a requirement for CLDs to be reused in other contexts e.g. by other projects, project partners and consortium members or by middleware services, shared services and portals. This has implications for the ownership and access rights and the commercial versus non-commercial supply/reuse of CLDs. Consideration needs to be given to the access/ownership rights and how these are made visible.

Information

• Discussion Group 1
• Discussion Group 2
• Discussion Group 3