Indecs Content Model: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 21:04, 2 July 2015

Revision as of 14:36, 11 November 2015

Line 3:

{{lowercase}}

['''indecs'''<ref>http://cordis.europa.eu/econtent/mmrcs/indecs.htm indecs]</ref> (an acronym of "[[interoperability]] of data in [[e-commerce]] systems"; written in lower case) was a project part funded by the [[European Community]] ''Info 2000'' initiative and by several organisations representing the music, rights, text publishing, authors, library and other sectors in 1998-2000, which has since been used in a number of [[metadata]] activities. A final report and related documents were published; the indecs Metadata Framework document [<ref>http://www.doi.org/topics/indecs/indecs_framework_2000.pdf "Principles, model and data dictionary"]</ref> is a concise summary.

indecs provided an analysis of the requirements for metadata for e-commerce of [[Content (media and publishing)|content]] (intellectual property) in the network environment, focussingfocusing on semantic [[semantic interoperability]]. Semantic interoperability deals with the question of how one computer system knows what the terms from another computer system mean (e.g. if A says "owner" and B says "owner", are they referring to the same thing? If A says "released" and B says "disseminated", do they mean different things?).

indecs was built from a simple generic model of commerce (the "model of making"): a model of the [[Product life cycle management|life cycle]] of any kind of content from conception to the final physical or digital copies. The top-level model is summarised as "people make stuff; people use stuff; and (for commerce to take place) people make deals about the stuff". If secure machine-to-machine management of [[commerce]] is to be possible, the stuff, the people and the deals must all be securely identified and described in standardised ways that machines can interpret and use. Central to the analysis is the assumption that it is possible to produce a generic mechanism to handle complex metadata for all different types of content. So, for example, instead of treating sound carriers, books, videos and photographs as fundamentally different things with different (if similar) characteristics, they are all recognised as creations with different values of the same higher-level attributes, whose metadata can be supported in a common environment.

Line 14:

* Across media (such as books, serials, audio, audiovisual, software, abstract works, visual material).

* Across functions (such as cataloguingcataloging, discovery, workflow and rights management).

* Across levels of metadata (from simple to complex).

* Across semantic barriers.

Line 26:

* ''The principle of Appropriate Access:'' everyone requires access to the metadata on which they depend, and privacy and confidentiality for their own metadata from those who are not dependent on it.

indecs also produced a useful ''definition of metadata'':

* An item of metadata is a [[relationship]] that someone claims to exist between two referents (entities).

* An item of metadata is a relationship that someone claims to exist between two referents (entities).

The indecs framework stresses the significance of relationships, which lie at the heart of the indecs analysis. It underlines the importance of unique identification of all entities (since otherwise expressing relationships between them is of little practical utility). Finally, it raises the question of authority: the identification of the person making the claim is as significant as the identification of any other entity.

Line 47 ⟶ 46:

* [http://www.doi.org/ Digital Object Identifier System] metadata schemes

One of the deliverables of the indecs project was a specification for a Directory of Parties. This led to a subsequent project, [Interparty<ref>http://www.interparty.org Interparty]</ref>, funded under the European Commission's Information Society Technologies Programme, to design and specify a network to support interoperability of party identification (for both natural and corporate names) across different domains, building on the indecs principles. InterParty was not proposed as a replacement for existing schemes for the identification of participants in the intellectual property ___domain (e.g. national library name authority files or systems oriented towards the needs of rights licensing) but as a means of effecting their interoperation. Some of its conclusions have been used elsewhere, e.g. in the work on the proposed ISO [ISNI<ref>http://isni.org/ ISNI]</ref> (International Standard Name Identifier).

Other developments are continuing, notably through the OntologyX semantic engineering tools and services from [http://www.rightscom.com Rightscom]. The approach also has much in common with the [http://cidoc.ics.forth.gr/index.html CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CRM)], an ontology for cultural heritage information, and the [[FRBR|Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR)]] model in the library world.

Line 55 ⟶ 54:

== Intellectual property rights ==

Indecs uses one common underlying structure which may be considered in three views[[view]]s: the general view; the commerce view; and the intellectual property (legal) view. An intellectual property right is a legal concept, with terms defined in a series of international conventions and treaties and under national law. The precise characteristics by which recognition of intellectual property rights is secured are elusive and are settled by editorial, commercial or, ultimately, by a legal judgement. Indecs does not attempt to replace such legal considerations, though a specific set of legal elements might be included in an indecs-based structure, and the indecs framework specifically includes some definitions from major international treaties such as the [[Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works|Berne Convention]] and the [[WIPO Copyright Treaty]].

== Mapping of terms ==

Different models of the life cycle of content may have important differences, not least in the specific meaning attached to the names of terms they employ. FRBR, indecs and CRM were each informed by different functional requirements, and so evolved different mechanisms for dealing with the issues that seemed most important to them. Each is a particular view on the "universe of discourse" of resources and relationships: there are many valid views. Broadly, they are compatible, and effective integration of metadata from schemes based on them should be achievable, but they must be handled with care. As an example: the terms abstraction, manifestation, item and expression are often used in considering content life cycles (e.g. a sound recording is the expression of a musical work during a recording session at a particular place and time, and is distinct from, say, the master tape made, which is a manifestation). These were dealt with in indecs, but may have slightly different meanings in other schemes. Such an analysis of meaning of a term from a scheme is possible in indecs by mapping the precise definitions into further terms with precise definitions within the indecs Frameworkframework. indecs and other frameworks based on it continue to be developed and refined through the process of implementation.

== References ==