The Vocabulary Mapping Framework Project

Metadata vocabularies are becoming increasingly complex, granular and multi-faceted – nowhere more so than preservation and heritage oriented archives which typically catalogue a much greater amount of information about assets and artefacts than business oriented DAMs.  While extending the depth of cataloguing data helps to provide an enhanced range of search and retrieval mechanisms for end users (as well as detail about objects) there is correspondingly negative impact on interoperability between vocabularies and systems that use them.

Recognising this challenge, the RDA/ONX framework for resource categorisation was developed in 2006 by stakeholders from the library and publishing industry.  The Vocabulary Mapping Framework Project aims to  extend the RDA/ONX framework and fully realise interoperability across metadata vocabularies:

“The Framework allows for resource categories to be created out of a matrix of pre-defined attributes (a “pizza menu” approach where different ingredients are selected and the resulting combination given a name as a new category). The Framework therefore enables categories in different schemes to be defined and mapped securely to one another irrespective of naming differences. This method is a common form on ontology known as “Formal Concept Analysis”. The Framework was produced in a relatively short time by a small working group of experts in a number of major metadata standards. It was well received upon publication and has been used as a tool for defining the three proposed resource category lists in RDA (Media Type, Carrier Type and Content Type).  As yet none of the detailed lists from ONIX or other commercial standards have been incorporated, although that was and remains the intent. A proposal for resource categories based on the RDA/ONIX Framework was recently drawn up by Rightscom at the request of the International DOI Foundation. The current project extends the structure of the RDA/ONIX Framework to include relators, extending the matrix to cover the scope of the selected standards, and then populating it with the selected vocabularies.” [Read More]

The Vocabulary Mapping Framework has the support of a number of academic and industry groups, including:

• British Library
• Centre For Digital Library Research
• Digital Object Identifier System
• JISC
• Joint Steering Committee for Development of RDA (Resource Description and Access)
• rightscom
• University of Strathclyde

Read more about the framework here >>

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