2nd META-LIB Workshop, on the 1st and 2nd February 1999,
at Die Deutsche Bibliothek, Frankfurt a. M.

General:
The SSG-FI project is developed and maintained at the Lower Saxony State- and University Library in Göttingen (SUB). The project started in 1996. The main goal is to provide an internet-based subject gateway for the special collection areas held at the SUB. At the moment there are four special subject guides: GeoGuide for the Earth Sciences, MathGuide for Mathematics and the Anglo-American Culture Guides (AngloAmerican History and Literature).

Methods:

• indexing and cataloging high quality internet resources (interesting for international users) and offline/printed resources collected in the library (interesting for national users),
• internet sites are described which consist of either a single document, a theme orientated collection of documents or of entire servers with lots of documents,
• looking for online resources in the internet and selecting those which are of interest for professionals in the respective areas (students, scientists, teachers etc.),
• each resource is described with a set of metadata based on the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set in order to make records searchable and browsable (Subject Catalog and Source Type Catalog),
• the records are directly entered into a database (Allegro) and exported to HTML format.

The result is a list of high quality resources with short descriptions and full metadata-templates. In both cases the internet address is provided; clicking on the hyperlink leads the user directly to the resource.
The SSG-FI system provides a general framework for other collections and is open for further use, because all of the guides have an identical structure (metadata-template, thematic and formal browsing, local search etc.).
For external contribution, we have also developed an internet Metadata Entry Template (basic Template with title, description, URL and full Template with all categories/elements).

Metada Concept:
based on Dublin Core:

• 13 DC elements (DC.Contributor  and DC.Source not used in the SSG-FI template)
• 12 SSG-FI elements (e.g. evaluation, statistics etc.)
• 3 elemente for internal database use (Allegro)

Metadata-Template (* multiple entries possible):
 

Bibliographic Data
0	File Number	automatically, number of resource in the database Allegro	internal category
10	Title	Document name provided by the author, creator, or publisher of the resource	DC.Title
11	Author*	Person(s) responsible for the intellectual content of the document (webmasters are not considered authors)	DC.Creator
12	Editor*	Editor(s) responsible for the intellectual content of the document (i.e. journals)	DC.Creator
13	Publisher*	Publisher, Society, Department, etc. responsible for the document in terms of content	DC.Publisher
14	Distributor	Institution responsible (in technical terms) for operation of the server on which the document is stored (i.e. universities, faculties, etc.)	DC.Publisher
15	Type	on(line), off(line) or pr(inted) (WWW, CD-ROM, book)	DC.Type
16	Language*	Language(s) of document contents, following the ISO 639 code	DC.Language
17	Country	Country in which the resource is stored or in which the server is located. (ISO 3166:1993, German DIN EN 23166:1995)	SSG.Country
18	Format*	online resources: data format(s) of resource, e.g. text/html (text file), jpeg (image file), gif (image file). This is to inform users on hardware and software needed to view document and to estimate download times offline resources: hardware and software requirements printed resources: document size (oktav, quart, folio).	DC.Format
19	Keywords*	Keywords describing the content of the resource	DC.Subject
20	Description	Text description of resource (abstract)	DC.Description
21	URL	online resources Uniform Resource Locator: identifier for resource offline and printed resources URL of online information if available	DC.Identifier (URL is standard)
22	ISBN	International Standard Book Number to identify printed resources	DC.Identifier SCHEME="ISBN"
23	ISSN	International Standard Series Number to identify printed or online periodica	DC.Identifier SCHEME="ISSN"
24	Call Number	offline and printed resources only: Libary call number	DC.Identifier SCHEME="CallNumber"
25	Mirrors*	online resources only: URL of the geographically closest mirror site	DC.Relation SCHEME="URL" ROLE="mirror"
26	Derived from	Relation between online/offline and printed resources, e.g. ISSN, ISBN of printed version (where applicable)	DC.Relation SCHEME="ISSN", "ISBN", "URL"
27	Contained in	online resources: source into which the information is integrated/linked , e.g. "Homepage of..." (including URL) offline resources: typically not applicable printed resources: series title, if part of a series	DC.Relation SCHEME="URL" ROLE="parent"
28	Archived by	Institution which archives resource online resources: e.g. libraries, commercial publishers, archives offline and printed resources: e.g. special subject libraries or libraries with special subject collections, such as the Lower-Saxonian State and University Library, Göttingen (SUB Göttingen)	DC.Relation ROLE="archive"
29	Source Type*	Source type key, based on which the linklists of the Source Type Catalog are generated - e.g. databases, bibliographies, etc. as defined in Regeln für den Schlagwortkatalog (RSWK, 2nd edition 1991)	SSG.Formal or DC.Type
Classification
40	KAT verbal*	Subject heading of primary subject classification: Mathematical Subject Classification (MSC) or Göttinger Online Klassifikation (GOK)	DC.Subject SCHEME="KATVerbal"
41	KAT*	Primary subject classification: Mathematical Subject Classification (MSC) or Göttinger Online Klassifikation (GOK), based on which the linklists of the Subject Catalog are generated)	DC.Subject SCHEME="KAT"
42	DDC*	Secondary classification scheme: Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC)	DC.Subject SCHEME="DDC"
43	BK*	Tertiary classification scheme: Basic classification of the Joint Library Catalog of Northern Germany Libraries (GBV - Gemeinsamer Bibliotheksverbund)	DC.Subject SCHEME="BK"
Dates (syntax: YYYYMMDD)
50	Date	online resources: last update of document offline and printed resources: date of publication	DC.Date
51	Course	Course of publications, e.g. quarterly, monthly, continuous, irregular, bimonthly, etc. for journals	SSG.Course
52	Temporal Coverage	Information on the period of time for which documents are available	DC.Coverage.t.min DC.Coverage.t.max
Availability
60	Access	Access to the resources: online resources: does access invoke costs to users? If not: "free" offline and printed resources: available via SUB Göttingen, OPAC, GBV Verbundkatalog, Deutschen Verbundkatalog or Karlsruher Virtueller Katalog (KVK).	DC.Rights.Access
61	Restriction	online resources: other restrictions, e.g. if specific authorization, passwords, etc. are required. If not: "none" offline and printed resources: dependent on library privileges of users	DC.Rights.Restrictions
62	Remarks	Additional information, if appropriate online resources: e.g. on specific software needed to view or use documents offline resources: subscription rates, etc.	DC.Rights.Remarks
Evaluation
70	Contents	Rating regarding the scholarly relevance, the scope of information, and analytical depth (superficial or exhaustive coverage); maximum: "***"	SSG.Evaluation.Contents
71	Clarity	Rating from * to *** (max.) regarding clarity, layout, and form in which the information is presented; maximum: "***"	SSG.Evaluation.Clarity
72	Index	Rating from regarding structure and indexing of resource (table of contents, index, site map, local search engine); maximum: "***"	SSG.Evaluation.Index
73	Links	online resources only: Rating from * to *** (maximum) regarding number and relevance of links to similar and related topics	SSG.Evaluation.Links
74	Level*	Scholarly level on which the topic is treated (popular; undergraduate; graduate; professional)	SSG.Evaluation.Level
Statistics
80	Size	online resources: number of entries or documents integrated into site or in database. If not provided by server, can be left blank. offline resources: number of records in database printed resources: page count, etc.	SSG.Size
82	Backlinks	online resources only: number of backlinks to this site from other servers (determined using general search engines such as AltaVista)	SSG.Backlinks
90	Notes	Further notes, if appropriate online resources : e.g. regarding status of construction printed resources : information on forthcoming new editions, etc.	SSG.Notes
91	Timestamp	Date on which the SSG-FI record was created, or on which it has last been revisited by SSG-FI	SSG.Timestamp
Internal
93	Comment	Comments etc. to editors	internal category
94	Status	Record complete / incomplete	internal category

Problems/open questions:

• DC.Title: What is the title of a document? Sometimes the title tag and the title of the document are different, sometimes there is no title or the title is not very meaningful.
• The differences between Dublin Core and SSG-FI regarding the interpretation of the DC element DC.Creator. The SSG-FI distinguishes between a creator who is an author and a creator who is an editor (important for online resources: for journals, linklists etc., but also important for printed resources). Both instances are subsumed under creator in DC.
• Syntax problems, e.g. creator: first name, last name, and in subelement e-mail address. But if there are several creators, it could be a problem to know which e-mail address belongs to which creator. In SSG-FI: first name, last name; e-mail repeated in one content field.
• Is the SSG-FI category Source Type identical with the DC element DC.Type? In SSG-FI internet sites are described which consist of either a single document, a theme oriented collection of documents or entire servers with lots of documents. The SSG-FI category Source Type specifies the „type“ of document, e.g. University Department, Library, Data Collection, Map, Software, Journal etc. There are about 40 possibilities to classify the „type“ of document, which SSG-FI uses for each special subject area. At the moment the category DC.Type is used by SSG-FI only to describe the form of publication: online (WWW), offline (CD-ROM’s), printed (Book). So the question is whether the usage of type in our project is compliant to DC.Type. In the first case, the use of the SSG-FI category Source Type is very specific and in the second case the use is very general.
• Copyright problems in case of existing metadata (e.g. created by the author of the document or by a third party): Copying and citing the metadata, editing the metadata or creating a whole metadata set by SSG-FI?
• What is the difference between DC.Source and DC.Relation? In both: has/is version of!
• DC.Relation is still under development. According to the Relations Element Working Group Draft, relations are to be expressed in a relation identifier and a relation type. Our relation type is still called role, of which there are three: mirror, parent, archive. Being one of the earliest DC implementations we wait for a more definite solution before we change our approach to DC.Relation.

Experience (example GeoGuide)

• on the data input side: Full Entry Template hardly requested, Basic Entry Template: about 4 entries per month, but there is substantial notification by e-mail
• on the data output site: Full Metadata Template with all categories is rarely frequented, most users stop with the Mini-Template (title, keywords, URL, evaluation)

• about 1000 site requests per day to the whole SSG-FI sites (November 98)
• the advanced search form, which allows to search in all categories, is rarely requested
• we think that the SSG-FI category country is an important search tool (e.g. if you search for all University Departments in Italy)

Appendix: Presentation of metadata in HTML-format:

• Example A: GeoGuide online resource, Journal: Free Full Articles Available
• Example B: GeoGuide printed resource, Handbook