Week 9: A change of plans

So, it seems like things have really changed.  After the weeks long stall due to the technical problems running Schematron, I spoke with Michelle about where to go from here.  Until she is able to get in touch with people from Mulberry Technologies and other Schematron list groups, there is very little I can do with Schematron, besides some editing here and there.  

During our meeting, she suggested to me that I take a break from Schematron and start looking at another potential project.  Based on my interest/desire to expose myself to additional metadata standards (other than Dublin Core and RDF), she mentioned a project working with Image Collection Online.  This project would help acquaint me more with metadata and metadata mapping.  DLP first began working with other collections to help them with their cataloging and metadata needs.  Originally, DLP gave these special collections (ex: Liberian Photograph Collections) a core set of fields.  Slowly, these collections started asking for more specialized fields to account for their diverse cataloging needs.  While this may have started off well, and DLP was glad to be flexible, soon the process of customizing fields became too overwhelming and chaotic.  In addition, even though a collection may have a large amount of specialized fields, they will not all show up in the interface, anyway. So, now, DLP wants to start moving back towards a core set of fields.  What Michelle thinks I can do is play the part of a sort of metadata analyst.  I can first establish what the core fields are, then analyze the divergent fields and see if any of those are actually more similar than previously thought.  We could then merge those fields to allow the collections to express what they feel is necessary, but without overwhelming the system.  Then, I would figure out what metadata can be mapped to MODS.   One nice thing about this project is that I would be working with the Metadata Working Group associated with ICO.  This would allow me to have the collaboration I was missing.  As much as I feel dismayed about leaving Schematron behind for now, I think this is a good direction to take things.