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Integrating digital libraries and VLEs in higher & further education
Resource description
A number of problems can be identified:
- The difficulty of creating metadata which can cater for the conflicting requirements of content management systems, the library catalogue and the published standards.
- The need to map 'library' standards/schema (MARC, DC etc.) with 'learning' approaches (IMS, LOM, SCORM etc.). There is of course a considerable amount of international effort in this field, going well beyond the DiVLE programme. As yet there is a lack of consensus across UK FE/HE on the preferred approach.
- Problems of semantic interoperability even where it is possible to map fields between schema. Mapping between vocabularies is thus a significant issue (as it is in other fora).
- Lack of support for some requirements which arise at the learning environment / digital library boundary, of which reading lists are the most obvious example. Thus library management systems support item level descriptions but may not support embedded annotations, course coding etc. which are sharable across the Digital Library / VLE interface. There is also an important issue in this area related to version control, since academic practice may be one of 'continuous updating', thereby creating dynamic rather than static objects.
- The use of multiple metadata schemas to describe objects (and multiple controlled vocabularies) creates problems. It is likely that these will be needed to provide different 'views' on each object dependent on different purposes / audiences.
Additional Resources
LinkER projects explored a range of issues surrounding the creation and mapping of metadata between library and learning objects.
UKOLN has done extensive work in this area and provides information on a range of
metadata projects, resources and initiatives.