Collaborative Project: An NSDL Registry: Supporting Interoperable Metadata Distribution

这个服务跟踪项目是来自华盛顿大学（0532828）和康奈尔大学（0532854）的研究人员的合作，他们正在开发和部署一个元数据注册服务，以补充NSDL中央元数据存储库。该注册中心基于开源的Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) registry应用程序，它允许多个不同的集合提供者和其他NSDL项目识别、声明和发布它们的元数据模式（元素/属性集）和模式（受控词汇表）。此外，该项目还为人类和机器代理使用的方案和模式的注册提供支持，以及为这些方案（语义映射）和模式（人行横道）中术语和概念之间的关系的机器映射提供支持。这个项目的智力价值在于它使用元数据方案和模式的分布式注册，以改善在日益异构的Web数字图书馆世界中为用户提供的服务；它指出了一个环境，在这个环境中，不同的社区和他们的词汇表之间的重要语义联系是有效的。该项目更广泛的影响是它对注册表软件的一般化和超越集中控制的元数据模式的实现。这使得将适当的控制和管理分配到词汇表创建者和维护者手中，从而促进克服阻碍注册表和分布式注册表网络预期增长的经济和法律障碍的潜力。

This Services track project is a collaboration of investigators from the University of Washington (0532828) and Cornell University (0532854) who are developing and deploying a metadata registry service to complement the NSDL Central Metadata Repository. The registry is based on the open-source Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) Registry application and enables multiple diverse collection providers and other NSDL projects to identify, declare, and publish their metadata schemas (element/property sets) and schemes (controlled vocabularies). Furthermore, the project provides support for registration of schemes and schemas for use by human and machine agents, as well as support for the machine mapping of relationships among terms and concepts in those schemes (semantic mappings) and schemas (crosswalks). The intellectual merit of the project lies in its use of distributed registries of metadata schemes and schemas to improve services to users in an increasingly heterogeneous Web digital library universe; and it points to an environment where important semantic connections between diverse communities and their vocabularies are effectively enabled. The broader impact of the project is its generalization of registry software and implementation beyond centrally controlled metadata schemas. This enables the distribution of appropriate control and management into the hands of vocabulary creators and maintainers, thus facilitating the potential to overcome economic and legal barriers that have prevented the anticipated growth of registries and distributed registry networks.