DC-based Application Profile for Agricultural Resource Description

Date:      Mon, 18 Jun 2001 11:44:58 +0200
From:      "Katz, Stephen (GILW)" <stephen.katz@fao.org>
To:        Yahoo 'agstandards' group
Subject:   DC-based Application Profile for Agricultural Resource Description

Dear Colleagues,

At long last, I am pleased to announce that the draft specification for a Dublin-Core based standard for describing document-like agricultural resources is now ready!! The specification also takes into consideration the many comments of the Agstandards list members as well as those we received from Stuart Weibel, Executive Director the of Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI), when he was in Rome earlier in the Spring.

Here are the details:

First, we have drafted an introductory document called "Metadata Framework for Resource Discovery of Agricultural Information: An introduction". This document provides the overall context for this work; why the standard is needed; how the work was done, and it provides some thoughts on where we might go from here. The document also provides a summary of how we have addressed the comments from the Agstandards list. This document can be found at http://www.fao.org/agris/MagazineArchive/MetaData/Introduction.doc.

The crucial document is called "Presentation of a metadata set for the description of agricultural documents and document-like resources", and it provides the elements and qualifiers of the proposed standard, presented in a hierarchical structure. We have tried to make a clear distinction of where we are applying Dublin Core elements and qualifiers as specified by the DCMI, and where we have suggested additional requirements to meet the needs of the Agricultural Community. This document is located at http://www.fao.org/agris/MagazineArchive/MetaData/PresentationSet.doc.

Finally, we have drafted a document called "Element Description for Agricultural Information Resources," which provides a more detailed description of all the elements and qualifiers, including information on definitions, rules, and data typing. Please note that some of the elements defined in this document are outside the scope of the agricultural application profile. The reason for this is that this document will eventually become a sort of dictionary for all unique elements and qualifiers regardless of the application where they are used (i.e. to capture the unique concept, not its usage); see http://www.fao.org/agris/MagazineArchive/MetaData/ElementFinal.doc.

We see the next steps as follows:

Receive further feedback and comments from the Agstandards community and other partners.
Encode the standard within an XML framework (initially by defining an XML DTD and an RDF Schema for the standard)
Based on existing document-like resources, generate sample XML and RDF data based on the schema and analyze the results.
Proceed with an initial implementation of the pilot project to provide multi-host searching using the agricultural application profile as the standard for linking common metadata across different agricultural gateway services.
Register the agricultural application profile (and future similar standards) with authoritative schema registries.

Thank you for your patience and perseverance, and above all for your insightful inputs and active participation!

Steve Katz

Prepared by Robin Cover for The XML Cover Pages archive.

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