The Problem of Ingesting and Delivering Complex Objects from Digital Repositories
http://matrix.msu.edu/mkornbluh/pdf/crete_5_28_03.pdf

Kornbluh, Mark, Jerry Goldman and Dean Rehberger
Michigan State University
2005

Abstract:

The recent emergence of online digital archives has brought educators a major step closer to bringing original, reusable digital objects into undergraduate classrooms. Yet having to search multiple archives through mind-numbing search-and-browse routines can make it extremely difficult for educators to use the repositories successfully in their curriculum. What educators need is a suite of tools that allow them to reduce the search for relevance, expand the metadata with user-specific annotation, and tie the digital libraries' content directly to course materials. The keys to creating these resources are to build distributed networks of users and repositories. Cost containment often severely limits the amount of descriptive metadata that can be catalogued. Students and instructors create topical annotated bibliographies or lists of media clips (or segments of media clips) and 'publish' these for class, work group, or more general use. Allowing teachers and students to annotate and segment media as well as build their own galleries greatly enhance the educational value of digital objects by augmenting the minimal descriptive metadata and facilitating the building of complex digital objects tailored to the needs of specific education standards and curricula. The project uses a METS XML schema that provides an encoding format for administrative, descriptive, and structural metadata that is fully compliant with OAIS, and open source applications to facilitate ingestion and delivery (as well as help to control costs).