Clever Recordkeeping Metadata Project Outcomes

Final Report

The CRKM Project concluded in December 2006. The final report of the project details the agile, iterative, rapid prototyping techniques employed in the development of a proof-of-concept Metadata Broker featuring recordkeeping metadata translation and registry services functionality. The prototyping process enabled exploration of issues regarding implementation environments and infrastructures to support recordkeeping metadata re-use and interoperability. The related PhD thesis, Building Capacities for Recordkeeping Metadata Interoperability, explores these requirements for recordkeeping metadata interoperability in depth.

The results of the research reveal how the limitations of current recordkeeping standards and practices that are predominantly still operating within the paper paradigm inhibit realisation of the full potential of recordkeeping metadata as a business tool. Recordkeeping practices and recordkeeping metadata schemas are yet to be fully transformed to meet the requirements of the emerging technical environments.

The Project demonstrates the immediate utility, but limited functionality, of essentially hard-wired metadata translation services to current recordkeeping problems. It also illustrates the potentially much greater utility of recordkeeping metadata registry and brokerage services in emerging service oriented architectures. The lack of maturity of this emerging environment offers huge challenges, but also an opportunity for the recordkeeping community and academic contributors to be proactive in defining recordkeeping services, and the role of recordkeeping itself in this emerging environment in the short to medium term.

Final report of the CRKM Project (Word document)

Broad Research Findings

  • There is currently a limited capacity to support recordkeeping metadata re-use because recordkeeping processes, practices, standards and infrastructure still largely operate in paper-based paradigms.
  • Current recordkeeping metadata standards lack semantic precision, and canonical machine processable encodings, both of which inhibit their uptake.
  • Deployment of a metadata broker modelled on the CRKM Metadata Broker I will provide immediate practical use in environments where recordkeeping metadata is to be passed from one known environment to another, for example between a specific business system and a records system.
  • However the CRKM Metadata Broker I model is of limited flexibility, scaleability and robustness, as it relies on hand crafted metadata crosswalks.
  • The notion of Metadata Registries as currently in use in the literature is a compound concept which needs to be broken down into more granular statements of functionality which include different uses of the term 'metadata registry' to include authoritative schema registries, and multiple functionality required to support specific services.
  • The emergence of services oriented architectures and the re-articulation of metadata broker components as services in these kind of environments, as per the CRKM Metadata Broker II model, has the potential to provide greater return on investment and cost effectiveness.
  • The services oriented environment is much hyped, and represents a significant shift in the technological environment, but the reality of sustainable implementation is likely to take many years.
  • The recordkeeping profession has an opportunity with this anticipated lead time to both re-envision recordkeeping functions and processes in service oriented terms and to address and influence the broader technology community on the role of recordkeeping in the service oriented environment.

Outcome Areas

  1. Impact of different information paradigms on metadata interoperability
  2. Recordkeeping metadata standards
  3. Paper paradigms prevail
  4. Re-conceptualising the delivery of recordkeeping services
  5. Service orientation for recordkeeping
  6. Metadata registry functionality and general robustness of technology infrastructure