Clever Recordkeeping Metadata Project Glossary

Australian Government Locator Service (AGLS) - Metadata in the form of metatags to provide better access to government information online and facilitate eGovernment.

Descriptive metadata - Structured or semi-structured information that enables the creation, management and use of records through time, and within and across the domains in which they are created and used.

eBusiness - involves the use of IT and internet-based technologies (such as intranets and extranets) to support commerce and improve business performance.

eGovernment - the application of new technologies to government services, information and administration, to demonstrate sustained benefits to citizens, business and government itself.

Source: NOIE, Better Services, Better Government: the Federal Government's E-government Strategy, 2002.

Implementation modelling - Implementation modelling involves simulating the implementation of a system in order to develop a framework that can be used to guide further implementations.

InterPARES - International Research on Permanent Authentic Records in Electronic Systems project, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, of Canada.

Metadata - generically defined as "structured data about data".

Metadata Broker - A service that enables the translation of metadata between schemas.

Metadata registry - A metadata registry is a formal system that records the semantics, structure, and interchange formats of any type of data, e.g. data found in databases, messages, documents and other applications. The descriptions of data are recorded in the form of metadata (data about data). ... One of the essential characteristics of a metadata registry is the existence of a formal Authority agency that manages development and evolution of the registry and is responsible for policies pertaining to contents and operation of the registry. An attribute of each set of metadata should be the authority agency for that particular set.

Source: Joint Workshop on Metadata Registries, Draft Workshop Report 1.6, 23 December 1997.

Metadata standard - A codification of metadata requirements from a particular perspective. A metadata standard defines both the object(s) and the data about those object(s) to satisfy the requirements of a particular community or viewpoint.

Metatools - Metatools are tools to support the capture, management and use of metadata. They may include metadata registries, repositories and translations and transformation services.

Proof of concept prototype - In the context of the Clever Recordkeeping Metadata Project, the proof of concept prototype will be the model of a system which illustrates the automated capture and re-use of recordkeeping metadata.

Recordkeeping - Making and maintaining complete, accurate and reliable evidence of business transactions in the form of recorded information.

Source: AS 4390-1996 Australian Standard: Records Management, Standards Australia, Homebush, 1996.

Recordkeeping Metadata - Structured or semi-structured information which enables the creation, management and use of records through time and within and across domains in which they are created. Recordkeeping metadata can be used to identify, authenticate, and contextualize records; and the people, processes and systems that create, manage, maintain and use them.

Source: David Wallace, 'Archiving Metadata Forum: Report from the Recordkeeping Metadata Working Meeting, June 2000', Archival Science, vol. 1, no. 3, 2001, pp. 253-269.

Service Oriented Architecture - A SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) is a component model that inter-relates the different functional units of an application, called services, through well-defined interfaces and contracts between these services. The interface is defined in a neutral manner that should be independent of the hardware platform, the operating system, and the programming language the service is implemented in. This allows services, built on a variety of such systems, to interact with each other in a uniform and universal manner.

Source: IBM developerWorks, New to SOA and Web Services, 5 November 2004.

User-centred rapid prototyping - User-centred rapid prototyping involves the development of a prototype in a series of short iterations with the user playing a central role in the design and evaluation of the system.

Web services - A Web service is a software system identified by a URI [RFC 2396], whose public interfaces and bindings are defined and described using XML. Its definition can be discovered by other software systems. These systems may then interact with the Web service in a manner prescribed by its definition, using XML based messages conveyed by Internet protocols.

Source: W3C, Web Services Glossary, W3C Working Draft 14 November 2002, Allen Brown and Hugo Haas (editors), W3C, 2002, http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-ws-gloss-20021114/.