Collaborative Creation of the

OER Metadata Rosetta Stone

November 10^th, 2020

1:00pm EST

Camille Thomas, Florida State University

Heather White, Mt Hood Community College

Bill Jones, SUNY Geneseo

The Rosetta Stone, Pixabay

Why does OER need a Metadata Rosetta Stone?

“While there is ongoing improvement in some of the larger open educational resources (OER) search engines, librarians sending emails to listservs asking ‘anyone know of OER on this topic?’ and keeping old-fashioned reading lists of valuable OER are common occurrences.”

• Sobotka, C., Wheeler, H., & White, H. (2019). Leveraging Cataloging and Collection Development Expertise to Improve OER Discovery. OLA Quarterly, 25(1), 17-24. https://doi.org/10.7710/1093-7374.1971

Metadata Silos = Discovery Silos = Missed OER

• Unique Application Profiles (data entry forms for OER details)
• Unique user interfaces based off unique metadata protocols
• Inconsistent publication data

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Made, AU, Noun Project

Why does OER need a Metadata Rosetta Stone? (cont.)

Gold Standard: Library Research

• Library Catalogs and Scholarly Research Databases
• Bibliographic Control of Descriptive Metadata
• MARC Records
• Controlled Vocabularies (LCSH, MeSH, Sears, etc.)
• Cataloging/Metadata Librarians and Systems Librarians that specialize in vendor-neutral information storage and retrieval

Federated Searching: a big step in the right direction

(data in/data out; no enhancement to improve OER discovery)

• The Mason OER Metafinder
• OASIS (Bill Jones!)
• EBSCO’s Faculty Select

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Next Step: Translate Metadata Languages

• Technical Services Librarians + OER Repository Administrators share expertise

Untitled CC0, PxHere

OER Discovery Working Group

• Bobby Bothmann, Minnesota State University, Mankato, Mankato, Minnesota
• Michelle Brennan, Information Services Manager, ISKME/OER Commons
• Gretchen Gueguen, Digital Projects Manager, PALCI
• Lillian Hogendoorn, Digital Access & OER Lead, eCampusOntario, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
• Bill Jones, Digital Resources and Systems Librarian, SUNY Geneseo, NY
• Camille Thomas, Scholarly Communication Librarian, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL (SPARC)
• Holly Wheeler, Library Cataloging & Metadata Specialist, Mt Hood Community College, Gresham OR
• Heather White, Library Technical Services & OER Coordinator, Mt Hood Community College, Gresham, OR

Iconaton, US, Noun Project

Initiative Background

• SPARC’s LibOER Monthly Community Calls featured OER Discovery as a topic
• Gathered information on existing initiatives, research and leaders - particularly people with metadata and cataloging expertise
• Created an internal report to inform next steps to contribute to sustainable discovery infrastructure
• Formed OER Discovery Group

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Collaborative Process: In the beginning...

We began by developing a list of “Core Elements” based on the DPLA Application Profile, and then referenced additional schemas to add new elements

Our Group

Wilson Joseph

Collaborative Process: Making Meaning

We created a simple table to define our elements and assigned members of the group to define each of the elements by borrowing a definition from existing schemas or creating their own

The goal was to make the definitions as meaningful as possible

These original table headings have changed in our current version

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Collaborative Process: Developing Recommendations

Is the element Required? Recommended? Or Optional?

Required: �The element must be contained within the new metadata record.

Recommended: �The element must be supplied to the new metadata record when available from the original object. Some of these were elements that we wanted to be required, but thought would not necessarily always be available from the existing record. The new metadata record is still considered complete in absence of a recommended element.

Optional: �Recognized as useful, but the new metadata record is still considered complete in absence of an optional element.

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Symbolon, IT, Noun Project

Collaborative Process: Mapping the Elements

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Using MHCC’s OER MARC Template (CC-BY) as a foundation, we mapped the selected elements to their MARC values.

We also began by mapping to Dublin Core, and then created a blend of LRMI with Schema.org

Collaborative Process: Testing the Records

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We tested sample OER to see how well we would be able to adapt the existing metadata for the item into to the OER Metadata Rosetta Stone schema. One of the test source records was containing a field for Audience, which was missing from our schema. This led to the addition of the field of Audience, defined by OpenAire:

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Collaborative Process: Circular Conversations

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• It was important to write out a rationale
• We’d often had to revisit elements
• New elements when testing records
• Discrepancies among schema
• We decided to keep a flat file structure without any subfields to make it simpler for both the metadata operator and the technical programmer

The OER Metadata Rosetta Stone

Core elements:

The OER Metadata Rosetta Stone: Core Elements

Title�Author/Creator�Subject�Description�Language�Date�Material Type�Media Format�Rights Holder�License Description�License Title�License URL

Audience�Contributor�Editor�Table of Contents�File Type�File Size�Duration�Identifier�Peer Review�Education Level�Course Title�Course Identifier

Alternate Title�Edition Statement�Page Count�Publisher�Provider�Place�Provenance�Relationship�Is Ancillary�Has Ancillaries

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Required

Recommended

Optional

Current Status & Next Steps

• Review from other stakeholders like Open Textbook Network, and Library of Congress
• Add Canadian metadata language OpenAIRE
• IMLS grant proposal - Fostering Implementation

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Untitled CC0, Pixnio

Thank you!

Questions?

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Presentation Handout

Collaborative Creation of the OER Metadata Rosetta Stone

Camille Thomas, Florida State University�Scholarly Communication Librarian�camille@sparcopen.org

Heather White, Mt Hood Community College�Library Technical Services & OER Coordinator�heather.white@mhcc.edu

Bill Jones, SUNY Geneseo�Digital Resources and Systems Librarian�jonesw@geneseo.edu