Adaptable metadata creation for the Web of Data

Abstract: One approach to manage collections is to create data about the things in it. This descriptive data is called metadata, and this term is in this thesis used as a collective noun, i.e no plural form exists. A library is a typical example of an organization that uses metadata, to manage a collection of books. The metadata about a book describes certain attributes of it, for example who the author is. Metadata also provides possibilities for a person to judge if a book is interesting without having to deal with the book itself. The metadata of the things in a collection is a representation of the collection that is easier to deal with than the collection itself. Nowadays metadata is often managed in computer-based systems that enable search possibilities and sorting of search results according to different principles. Metadata can be created both by computers and humans. This thesis will deal with certain aspects of the human activity of creating metadata and includes an explorative study of this activity. The increased amount of public information that is produced is also required to be easily accessible and therefore the situation when metadata is a part of the Semantic Web has been considered an important part of this thesis. This situation is also referred to as the Web of Data or Linked Data.With the Web of Data, metadata records living in isolation from each other can now be linked together over the web. This will probably change what kind of metadata that is being created, but also how it is being created. This thesis describes the construction and use of a framework called Annotation Profiles, a set of artifacts developed to enable an adaptable metadata creation environment with respect to what metadata that can be created. The main artifact is the Annotation Profile Model (APM), a model that holds enough information for a software application to generate a customized metadata editor from it. An instance of this model is called an annotation profile, that can be seen as a configuration for metadata editors. Changes to what metadata can be edited in a metadata editor can be done without modifying the code of the application. Two code libraries that implement the APM have been developed and have been evaluated both internally within the research group where they were developed, but also externally via interviews with software developers that have used one of the code-libraries. Another artifact presented is a protocol for how RDF metadata can be remotely updated when metadata is edited through a metadata editor. It is also described how the APM opens up possibilities for end user development and this is one of the avenues of pursuit in future research related to the APM.