Atlas of Living Australia <http://www.ala.org.au>

Metadata Repository

This is a DRAFT – please send us your comments and suggestions.

The most fundamental component of the ALA infrastructure will be a Metadata Repository which can not only document the existence of biodiversity data resources but also provide a flexible and scalable framework for managing information which can assist users of all types in finding relevant information.

The ALA has received additional funding in the period 2008-2010 from the NCRIS Platforms for Collaboration capability’s NeAT programme to assist in the development of its Metadata Repository and Data Annotation Services. See Data Integration and Annotation Services in Biodiversity.  It is intended that the ALA Metadata Repository will provide an environment in which tools and best practices can be developed which may subsequently be applied to other NCRIS capabilities.

The following functional requirements have been defined for the ALA Metadata Repository:

1. Storage of metadata documents, including:
   • Support for Dublin Core
   • Support for ISO 11179
   • Support for arbitrary RDF properties
   • Support for tagging metadata with ontology (OWL/OBO) terms
2. Metadata documents to describe:
   • Online databases and web services
   • Text documents (including PDF, Word, etc.)
   • Images and other multimedia resources
3. Harvesting of metadata from other repositories
   • Harvesting of documents using OAI-PMH
4. Pluggable framework for tagging metadata with terms derived from data content
   • Support for terms derived from occurrence data
   • Support for terms derived from taxonomic data
   • Support for terms derived from detecting scientific names in text documents (see uBio services)
   • Support for terms derived from image metadata (including XMP metadata)
5. Publication of metadata to other tools and repositories
   • OAI-PMH (offering ontology terms as OAI-PMH Sets)
   • Other SOAP and REST services as required
6. Data provider interface
   • Register/update/delete data provider
   • Register/update/delete database/service/document/image from data provider
   • Register/update/delete OAI-PMH feed from data provider
   • Accept/reject annotations
7. Administrator interface
   • Annotate metadata documents with arbitrary RDF properties and ontology terms
   • Accept/reject annotations
8. End-user interface
   • Full-text search
   • Browse by data provider
   • Browse by ontology terms
   • Faceted search via multiple ontologies
   • Propose annotations to metadata documents with arbitrary RDF properties and ontology terms
9. Access control
   • Integration with Shibboleth/PKI (to exploit AAF infrastructure and services)
   • AAF authenticated access to data provider, administrator and end-user interfaces
   • AAF-mediated restrictions on visibility for some metadata documents (possible – may not be necessary)
10. Wider compatibility (may be ensured by other requirements)
    • Compatibility with requirements within other NCRIS capabilities and within Platforms for Collaboration
    • Compatibility with other developing international biodiversity metadata repositories from projects such as GBIF, EOL, OBIS, and LTER