Start date: 1 May 2003
End date: 31 August 2003
Funding programme: PALS Metadata and Interoperability programme (phase 1)
JISC theme(s): Information environment
The project is carried out by Stoke on Trent College in partnership with Staffordshire University and Nelson Thornes Publishers. It aims to identify the practical issues that relate to preparing existing electronic (as prepared for print publishing) format resources for use within E-environments with respect to metadata for cross sector and cross-academic level usage.
The project has the following objectives:
- Nelson Thornes Publishers to provide native format electronic content as source for the project and to investigate the feasibility and identify the issues relating to publishers undertaking this type of content re-purposing.
- To identify the practical and technical issues related to the establishment of a functional classification and taxonomy across FE and HE sectors and programme levels, using engineering resource(s) supplied by Nelson Thornes.
- To identify the issues related to the preparation and re-purposing for use of native content with respect to metadata tagging and using the resource within a VLE and as an e-book. This would include examination of the publisher’s metadata, Ebrary and UKCMF’s (IMS mapped) metadata schemes.
- To publish the final content in SCORM 1.2, and e-book formats. To identify issues relating to seamless integration of e-books and SCORM packages into a VLE.
- To identify specific IPR and Copyright issues that would be typical barriers for publishers and institutions in developing this approach to content re-development.
- To disseminate the projects outcomes via the SURF, West Midlands Regional Support Centre, X4L projects and JISC service providers to input to the national effort.
- To develop a broader understanding of metadata within the FE sector and its role within the e-learning environment.
- To provide demonstrable links to X4L Strand A projects and the ICE project at Staffordshire University, which looks at linking VLEs to e-library and e-book systems.
The project is now complete and has produced comprehensive reports on the various issues the project has encountered. A summary of the final report, including the key findings and conclusions are attached below.