 |
|
 |
A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z
Note: Italicized items within a definition are defined elsewhere in the glossary.
ADEPT
Alexandria Digital
Earth Prototype, a project of the Alexandria
Digital Library (ADL), University
of California at Santa Barbara, via grant funding from the National
Science Foundation for 1999-2004 for 2nd stage project development of the
ADL.
ADL
Alexandria Digital
Library (ADL), a project of the University
of California at Santa Barbara.
ADN
ADL - DLESE - NASA,
a partnership between the ADL project, DLESE, and NASA's
ESSEC - the NASA Earth and Space Science Education Collections, for the development
of a common and extensible metadata framework known as ADN, an
XML schema-based framework with strong data typing and
controlled vocabulary support. The partnership leverages the ideas, technology,
architecture, and communities of all three organizations in order to strengthen
and unite digital library efforts in the geosciences.
Attribute
Describes additional information about an XML element. An example is
<price currency="Euro">. Currency is the attribute.
Cataloging
The process of providing metadata information for a resource that
enables discovery.
Categories
The first order division of metadata fields for the DLESE
metadata framework. Categories are made up of fields.
Collection
Generically, this means a group of metadata records that are organized
around a theme, or some other criteria. For specific types of collections within
DLESE, please see the individual entries for DLESE Collection, Reviewed
Collection.
Collection-level metadata
Metadata that describes the overall characteristics of a grouping
of item-level metadata records. This information includes who maintains
the collection, how many resources are in the collection, what type of resources
are in the collection and what is the scope of the collection.
Collections development
A process conducted over time that builds and shapes a collection of materials
into a balanced, cohesive, and sought-after set of user resources. This process
includes assessing the information needs of users, analyzing usage statistics
and demographic projections, formulating and articulating selection criteria,
planning for resource sharing, creating a well-defined cataloging plan, and
creating a selection and deselection mechanism for library items.
Complex tag
A set of XML elements that nest within other elements. Type and Name
are nested elements within the complex tag set of Requirements.
Controlled vocabularies
Words or phrases that catalogers use to complete metadata information.
Use of common words and phrases ensures better searching capabilities for library
users.
Crosswalk
A semantic or technical mapping (sometimes both) of one metadata
framework to another metadata framework.
DC
Dublin Core - the full name and acronym are Dublin
Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI). The Dublin Core metadata element
set is a commonly used standard for cross-domain information resource description.
DCS
An abbreviation for the DLESE
Collection System (cataloging and collection management tool).
DDS
An abbreviation for the DLESE Discovery System.
DLESE
Digital Library for Earth System Education
A frequent question is "How is DLESE pronounced?" Is it DLEES? DLEEZ? DLEEZ-EE, or DLEES-EE? This question was definitively resolved at the very first DLESE Annual Meeting in Bozeman, MT, in 2000, when the K-12 working group noted that since the final "E" at the end of the acronym stands for Education—a "pronounced part of the effort"—it should also be pronounced in articulation of the acronym. The community appreciated both the pun and the sentiment, and it has been "DLEES-EE" ever since.
DLESE Collection System
A Web-based tool for generating, editing, managing, discovering, and sharing
metadata records.
DLESE Collection
All resources in DLESE meet a basic set of standards, outlined in the Collections Policy. By definition, these resources are: web-based; have relevance to Earth system education; are basically bug-free; and are available at little or no cost.
DTD
Document Type Definition file that specifies how elements inside an XML document should relate to each other. It provides "grammar" rules
for an XML document and each of its elements. DLESE's metadata
records are XML documents.
Earth and Space Science Education Collections (ESSEC)
A NASA collection; also a DLESE partner in the development of the ADN
metadata framework.
Element
The smallest division within an XML document that is defined within
a DTD or schema. An example is <body>formatted text</body>.
Body is the element.
Fields
The smallest division within a metadata framework. Fields
become elements in a DTD or schema. Fields become
tag sets within XML documents when the field is surrounded
by a "<" and a ">" sign.
Framework
The systematic format and technical structure that supports metadata
concepts, contents, and controlled vocabularies. For DLESE, the
systematic format is a variation of the IMS framework and the technical
structure is XML.
FTP
File Transfer Protocol. The protocol used on the Internet for exchanging files.
FTP uses the Internet's TCP/IP protocols to enable data transfer. FTP is most
commonly used to download a file from a server using the Internet or to upload
a file to a server (e.g., uploading a Web page file to a server) (definition
obtained from Webopedia).
Harvest
Electronic file transfer over the Internet of metadata records between repositories. A primary method of transfer is to use the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH).
IMS
One of many different metadata schemes that exist. The abbreviation
no longer stands for anything. The IMS Project is part of the non-profit EDUCAUSE
consortium of U.S. institutions of higher education and their vendor partners
that work to develop open market-based standards for online learning, including
specifications for learning content metadata.
Interoperability
The ability to share (provide and harvest) metadata records via standard
protocols.
Metadata
Descriptive information (e.g. title, description, audience, geospatial coverage,
keywords) that can be used to describe, index, and discover learning resources
for particular user needs.
NASA
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NSDL
National Science Digital Library for science, technology, engineering,
and mathematics (STEM) disciplines.
OAI
An abbreviation for the Open
Archives Initiative, which develops and promotes interoperability standards
that aim to facilitate the efficient dissemination of content.
OAI-PMH
Open Archives Initiative-Protocol for Metadata Harvesting - an application-independent
interoperability framework.
Object-Level Metadata
Metadata that generally describes a single item or object.
Required metadata
The minimum level of metadata information that enables searching
and indexing of resources within DLESE. Some examples of required metadata
include: title, description, audience, technical information, copyright etc.
Every resource suggested to DLESE would include this information.
Reviewed collection
Materials that pass the filters to be in the DLESE Reviewed Collection and
have been reviewed to ensure that the following criteria stated in the scope
statement are met:
Schema
An XML document that describes the DLESE metadata framework
in terms of structure, data types, number of field occurrences, and controlled
vocabularies.
SDLIP
Simple
Digital Library Interoperability Protocol. A protocol to facilitate query
and response between clients and servers. Clients use SDLIP to request searches
to be performed over information sources. The resulting documents are returned
synchronously, or they are streamed from service to client as they become available.
STEM
Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education; a common abbreviation
for these combined disciplines.
SMETE
A previously-used acronym for: science, mathematics, engineering, and technology
education; superseded by the STEM acronym. Also an entity name: the SMETE
Digital Library.
Swiki
Swiki is a quite popular implementation of Ward Cunningham's WikiWikiWeb
(Squeak + Wiki = Swiki) that runs under Comanche (wiki-wiki is Hawaiian
for "quick"). Swiki may also be referred to as CoWeb, short for Collaborative
Website.
Tag set
An element defined in a DTD or a field enclosed in a greater-than
and a less-than sign. An example is <body>. The element, body, is defined
in the DTD. Body may also be the field name within the metadata scheme
(but not necessarily). The tag set is then "<body></body>.
Transform
Applyng a process that changes one metadata format to another through the application of a semantic crosswalk and technical XSLT transform, so that
DLESE Discovery can handle the metadata provided to make a record discoverable.
UTF 8
UTF = Universal Transformation Format, a method of converting characters into 7- or 8-bit characters. UTF-8 converts Unicode to 8-bit bytes.
Valid or validity
An XML document that adheres to the specifications outlined in the DTD.
This generally refers to how an element can occur, the name of the element
and the number of times the element can occur.
Well-formed
An XML document that adheres to the following XML syntax rules:
XML
eXentisible Markup Language,
a much-used format for defining the structure of information.
XSL
Acronym for eXtensible Style Language, a specification for separating style from content when creating HTML or XML pages. The specifications work much like templates, allowing designers to apply single style documents to multiple pages. XSL is the second style specification to be offered by the World Wide Web Consortium ( W3C )(www.w3c.org). XSL allows developers to dictate the way Web pages are printed, and specifications permitting the transfer of XML documents across different applications.
XSLT
An acronym for
Extensible Style Language Transformation, the language used in XSL style sheets to transform XML documents into other XML documents.
Last modified October 29, 2007. 
