|
�
Rights and Authority Control
Rights Administration
As the data about an electronic resource, Metadata functions
more than describing that resource. It can be used to
manage the access right of resource repository, characterize
the relationships between resources and users, or between
different resources themselves.
The right administration is a new concept
of Metadata to protect intellectual property rights in
the digital environment. Metadata is produced by publishers
or the owner of resource repository to manage the distribution,
access and ownership of resources, and effectively control
the transfer of such rights to different users. It ensures
authorized users to access the whole or part of components
of an intellectual "object" (for example, the
abstract or full text of an article) according to the
terms and conditions assigned.
The INDECS
(Interoperability of Data in E-Commerce Systems) project
and ONIX (Online
Information exchange) standard are two applications
of rights control Metadata that combines general metadata
schema with copyright control and protection developed
by publishers of electronic resources. A detailed introduction
of INDECS with DOI (Document Object Identifier) together
will be introduced later in this article.
Authority control
As more and more Metadata schemas are created, the number
of unfamiliar vocabularies used in those schemas is also
rapidly growing. Different Metadata could choose different
names for the same meaning, such as author, creator, producer
... all describe the body that creates the entity. How
can the searcher know what word or value has been assigned
to the resources that he is looking for? This could be
much more serious when dealing with the project using
special terminology such as Geospacial, chemical, or biological
databases.
The traditional subject heading could be
a good solution. With RDF
namespace, each schema can specify which classification
system it uses, and where to find this classification
system online. In this way different systems such as LCSH,
MESH, or even DDC that only
contains numbers can be compared and mapped in one repository.
It enables users to access different resource repositories
even they don't know the term or type of elements used
in that repository. He/she can type the common terms,
and the system will automatically map this name to the
correct one using authority file. It not only lets users
avoid learning different terminology as well as increases
the recall and precision of the search, but also provides
the convenience for the resource producers to create Metadata
with the terms they are familiar with. This could dramatically
reduce the workload of information professionals who are
currently responsible for making Metadata.
�
| 
