Describe Entity - Obtain Metadata

Process Module: Describe Entity

Process Title: Obtain Metadata

Definition: The process used to acquire information about an entity. Entities can include resources, collections, people, organizations, services, events, courses, facilities, finances, relationships, etc. Entities can be electronic/digital or physical. Entities can be held/maintained locally or remotely. Metadata will identify the entity and can be descriptive, structural, technical, and/or administrative. Metadata can be entered in real-time, via a batch process, or harvested from another repository. Metadata will generally be encoded using XML and will generally conform to an identified metadata content standard. The Obtain Metadata Process is independent of application end point, resource, data object, or underlying communications protocols and service models.

Workflow / Process Diagrams:

Use Cases: Metadata is obtained for resource discovery, supporting the management of entities by administrators or curators, ensuring the long-term maintenance and availability of entities, recording information such as provenance, ownership, copyright, access conditions, etc. Acquiring/obtaining metadata activities can occur for any entity being added to a collection, or to obtain additional/related information for an entity already within a collection. Activities may include:

Identification and selection of a new resource into the repository either without existing metadata; for example adding a new e-book; adding a review of an existing book to link to an existing descriptive metadata object; adding a new database; importing profile information about a new person to an organization, etc.
Addition of harvested metadata in the repository;

Metadata can be imported through protocols such as EDI transactions, ftp transfer, OAI harvesting, etc. Metadata is captured/deposited, validated and saved in the repository. Metadata being obtained may include descriptive, holdings, authority, financial, structural, and administrative or other types of data.

Reference(s):

(NLA Services Framework 6.5: Describe) “Process where metadata for an entity that has been selected for acquisition or trial, either permanently or temporarily, is selected, imported, validated and saved.”https://wiki.nla.gov.au/display/LABS/3.+Service+framework (v. 0.91, p. 35/46)
(NLA Services Framework 7.1: Register) “Add metadata to a registry.” https://wiki.nla.gov.au/display/LABS/3.+Service+framework(v. 0.91, p. 41/46)
(e-Framework: Obtain Service Genre: Obtain) Retrieve a business object from a curated collection in a specified representationhttp://www.e-framework.org/Contributions/ServiceGenres/tabid/987/Default.aspx
“The obtain service genre provides the mechanism to request objects from a data source. It is an example of a batch-oriented, request-response process. The data source is assumed to be a managed collection of objects, each of which is retrievable through a label.Each label identifies only one object in the collection. The prime use of the service genre is retrieving one or more of the objects in the collection by specifying their retrieval labels.”
“This service genre focuses on retrieving information from repositories and other similar data collections of content objects, making them available to external applications and end users. Typically, the data retrieved will be one or more of the objects in a repository.”
“The service genre is applicable for retrieving any defined data representation or dissemination for any specific object(s) managed by the data source. Objects have unique labels used for retrieval. Within the service genre, these labels are scoped only to the data source. For example, there is no requirement that the label be a unique identifier which is resolvable to the item within the data source.”http://fred.usq.edu.au/files/obtain%20object%20v1.0.1.pdf
(e-Framework: Service Genre: Validate) Check whether a business object meets specified conformance requirements http://www.e-framework.org/Contributions/ServiceGenres/tabid/987/Default.aspx