FW: Legislative Metadata

I've modified our example based on some comments from the Congressional Research Service (Library of Congress) and the following documents: http://dublincore.org/documents/dc-xml-guidelines/ and http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/ (see sections 3 and 4).

This is an XML version of Dublin Core. We were previously looking at an HTML version. I'm not sure I'm "allowed" to do a couple of things: (1) using a URI for the dc:creator element and (2) having two approaches for the dc:date. I've left out some of the AC elements (although the Thomas URL is in there as an identifier and DC also has a Rights element). I'm also not sure about the attributes I've got on the metadata element itself. Before going public, I hope we would have someone from Dublin Core review whatever we come up with. I've asked Daniel to contact Dublin Core to see if we can get some advice as we go through the process.

If you're ok with this as a first cut, I think it might be a good place to get into the discussion on Thursday. I don't really want to defend what I've done, but rather just wanted to propose something XMLish to get the discussion going. There are really only 12 elements here. In my opinion, only 3 of them could cause some indepth discussion:

Coverage (because it's the administrative entity rather than the geographical entitiy that we discussed last time),

Identifier (because of the standardized URI format), and

Creator (because there's a specifed format for the name of a legislator).

The other elements are standard Dublin Core stuff and maybe we could get agreement on those first and then discuss the other 3.

Joe

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LEGISLATIVE METADATA DRAFT STANDARD

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PURPOSE

The purpose of this standard is to provide consistency and uniformity among legislatures that choose to include metadata within legislatiion produced using the eXtensible Markup Language (XML).

The elements in this standard are based on the guidelines of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (http://dublincore.org). The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) is an organization dedicated to promoting the widespread adoption of interoperable metadata standards and developing specialized metadata vocabularies for describing resources that enable more intelligent information discovery systems.

The specific elements contained in this standard are optional and repeatable. In order to be compliant with this standard, the specific legislature does NOT need to use all the elements described in this standard, however, when these elements are used, each legislative body must use the elements as described in this document in order to provide uniformity among the legislatures adopting this standard. This will enable search engines to parse the contents of the elements completely. Each legislature may also choose to include other Dublin Core elements and/or other metadata elements as part of the metadata container. [I'm not sure we can do this and have a schema for the metadata itself, but I would imagine legislatures would want to use more and less elements than presented here. We might want to state that one or two of the elements are required (e.g. Coverage.]

METADATA ELEMENT DESCRIPTIONS

Coverage: Coverage can be represented in two ways: the geographic location based on the Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN) and/or the name of the legislature that produced the measure (e.g., "United States House of Representatives", "Utah House of Representatives", "County Council of Howard County, Maryland"). [Comment: We might want to use Publisher instead of covereage, but Dublin Core states that coverage can be the administrative entity.]

Identifier: The measure's number including the Congress, year, and/or session (depending on how the legislature handles this issue). The identifier should also include the measure's stage. Additonal optional element entries are in the form of a URI and/or URL to identify the measure uniquely across all legislative bodies.

If used, the URI needs to be in the form baseURI/(Congress,Session? | Year)/Measure Identifier (e.g., H. R., AB, etc.)/Number[stage]. Note: slashes are used to separate elements of the URI and the stage is presented in brackets at the end of the URI.

Title: The title of the measure.

Creator: If used, each legislature would need to determine the creator of legislation because of changes in creation brought about by the legislative process. However, when the creator is an individual, the format of the individual's name must be lastname, firstname [locale identification]). If multiple individuals are creators, a semi-colon should be used to separate the individual names. In the case of Federal legislation, the creator of an introduced measure is the sponsor (lastname, firstname [state and district]. Measures reported by a committee are created by that committee and presented by an individual, in which case two creator elements may be used. Measures that are engrossed (enacted by one body) or enrolled (enacted by both bodies and readied for presentation to the Executive) are created by the appropriate legislative body. An element entry in the form of a URI is also recommended in order to uniquely identify individual legislators (at least within that body) regardless of name and/or locale changes over time.

Description: A description of the measure.

Subject: At this point, see the DCMI explanation.

Description/Table of Contents: A listing of major headings within the measure.

Date: The date the measure is introduced, reported, engrossed, enrolled, etc. The choice of date versus legislative date is up to the legislature. Date is presented in an optional alternative approach that includes reference to the W3DTF format for the date.

Type: See DCMI explanation.

Format: See DCMI explanation.

Language: See DCMI explantion.

Rights: See DCMI explanation.

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EXAMPLE

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<?xml version="1.0"?>

<metadata

xmlns="http://www.oasis-open.org/legis-metadata"

xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"

xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.oasis-open/legis-metadata/metadata.xsd"

xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"

xmlns:dcterms="http://purl.org/dc/terms/">

<dc:coverage xsi:type="dcterms:TGN">United States</dc:coverage>

<dc:coverage>United States House of Representatives</dc:coverage>

<dc:identifier>108 H. R. 12 IH<dc:identifier>

<dc:identifier xsi:type="dcterms:URI">http://www.us-congress.gov/108/HR/12[IH]<dc:identifier>

<dc:identitfier xsi:type="dcterms:URL">http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:hr12:</dc:identifier>

<dc:title>Jobs and Growth Tax Act of 2003</dc:title>

<dc:creator>McKeon, Howard P. (Buck) [CA-25]</dc:creator>

<dc:creator xsi:type="dcterms:URI">http://bioguide.congress.gov/M000508</dc:creator>

<dc:description>To make changes to the Higher Education Act of 1965 incorporating the results of the FED UP Initiative, and for other purposes.</dc:description>

<dc:description xsi:type="dcterms:tableOfContents">Sec. 1. Short title; table of contents. Sec. 2. Reference; effective date; implementation. Title I-Technical Amendments Sec. 101. Technical amendments. Sec. 102. Clerical amendments. Sec. 103. Study of teacher preparation. Title II-Student Loan Forgiveness Sec. 201. Cancellation of student loan indebtedness for spouses, surviving joint debtors, and parents. Title III-Opportunities for Higher Education via Telecommunications Sec. 301. Exception to 50 percent correspondence course limitations. Sec. 302. Evaluation and report<dc:description>

<dc:subject> </dc:subject>

<dc:date>2003-01-07</dc:date>

<dcterms:modified refines="dc:date" xsi:type="dcterms:W3CDTF">2003-01-07</dcterms:modified>

<dc:type>text</dc:type>

<dc:format xsi:type="dcterms:IMT">text/xml</dc:format>

<dc:language xsi:type="dcterns:RFC3066">eng-US</dc:language>

<dc:rights>This information is a U.S. Government Publication. Works by the U. S. Government are not eligible for U. S. copyright protection.</dc:rights>

</metadata>

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Joe Carmel

Chief, Legislative Computer Systems

Office of the Clerk

US House of Representatives

2401 Rayburn House Office Building

Washington, DC 20515

202-225-1182 Fax: 202-225-6826

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