Re: [office-metadata] new vCard-in-RDF at W3C

[Bruce D'Arcus <bdarcus@gmail.com>]

On Nov 27, 2006, at 10:43 AM, robert_weir@us.ibm.com wrote:

> I spoke to technologists a couple of weeks ago at the Library and  
> Archives Canada.    From them I'm getting requests for info on how to  
> integrate ODF with METS/MODS/PREMIS.  These are metadata markups used  
> by archivists.  Library of Congress owns these standards, though it is  
> more widely used.
>
> So, I think we'll get requests like this from many corners.  
>
> How can we handle these requests in general?

We say they have two options:

1) if they want to be fully integrated into the expectations of the ODF  
metadata system (e.g. be compatible with application APIs built around  
it), they convert their metadata to RDF.

I'm deeply familiar with MODS (I helped enhance it to be suitable for  
citations), and will be happy to provide XSLTs to convert it to RDF/XML  
as a demonstration that it's actually really easy to do. I already have  
a draft version of this in fact:

<http://svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/xbiblio/biblio-schema/ 
mods2biblio.xsl?view=markup>

2) if they don't care about that integration, just store it as they  
wish (which they already can do)

It's worth noting that library people and archivists have rather  
different ideas on metadata. I had a conversation with some the  
archivists at the Access 2005 conference, and they complaining about  
MODS because it doesn't reflect their priorities.

We get around these debates by saying we don't care, so long as they  
use a common model.

Bruce