FW: Legislative Metadata

From: Joe Carmel

 

I've modified our example based on some comments from the 
Congressional Research Service (Library of Congress) and the following 
documents: http://dublincore.org/documents/dc-xml-guidelines/ 
and http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/ 
(see sections 3 and 4).

 

This is an XML version of Dublin 
Core.  We were previously looking at an HTML version.  I'm not sure 
I'm "allowed" to do a couple of things: (1) using a URI for the dc:creator 
element and (2) having two approaches for the dc:date.  I've left out some 
of the AC elements (although the Thomas URL is in there as an identifier and DC 
also has a Rights element).  I'm also not sure about the attributes I've 
got on the metadata element itself.  Before going public, I hope we would 
have someone from Dublin Core review whatever we come up with.  I've asked 
Daniel to contact Dublin Core to see if we can get some advice as we go through 
the process.

 

If you're ok with this as a first 
cut, I think it might be a good place to get into the discussion on 
Thursday.  I don't really want to defend what I've done, but rather just 
wanted to propose something XMLish to get the discussion going.  There are 
really only 12 elements here.  In my opinion, only 3 of them could cause 
some indepth discussion: 

 

            
Coverage (because it's the administrative entity rather than the geographical 
entitiy that we discussed last time), 

            
Identifier (because of the standardized URI format), and 

            
Creator (because there's a specifed format for the name of a legislator).  

 

The other elements are standard 
Dublin Core stuff and maybe we could get agreement on those first and then 
discuss the other 3.

 

Joe

 

 

 

===================================

LEGISLATIVE METADATA DRAFT 
STANDARD

===================================

 

PURPOSE

 

The purpose of this standard is to 
provide consistency and uniformity among legislatures that choose to include 
metadata within legislatiion produced using the eXtensible Markup Language 
(XML).

 

The elements in this standard are 
based on the guidelines of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative 
(http://dublincore.org).  The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) is an 
organization dedicated to promoting the widespread adoption of interoperable 
metadata standards and developing specialized metadata vocabularies for 
describing resources that enable more intelligent information discovery 
systems.

 

The specific elements contained in 
this standard are optional and repeatable.  In order to be compliant with 
this standard, the specific legislature does NOT need to use all the elements 
described in this standard, however, when these elements are used, each 
legislative body must use the elements as described in this document in order to 
provide uniformity among the legislatures adopting this standard.  This 
will enable search engines to parse the contents of the elements 
completely.  Each legislature may also choose to include other Dublin Core 
elements and/or other metadata elements as part of the metadata container. [I'm 
not sure we can do this and have a schema for the metadata itself, but I would 
imagine legislatures would want to use more and less elements than presented 
here.  We might want to state that one or two of the elements are required 
(e.g. Coverage.]

 

 

METADATA ELEMENT 
DESCRIPTIONS

 

Coverage: Coverage can be 
represented in two ways: the geographic location based on the Thesaurus of 
Geographic Names (TGN) and/or the name of the legislature that produced the 
measure (e.g., "United States House of Representatives", "Utah House of 
Representatives", "County Council of Howard County, Maryland").  [Comment: 
We might want to use Publisher instead of covereage, but Dublin Core states that 
coverage can be the administrative entity.]

 

Identifier: The measure's number 
including the Congress, year, and/or session (depending on how the legislature 
handles this issue).  The identifier should also include the measure's 
stage.  Additonal optional element entries are in the form of a URI and/or 
URL to identify the measure uniquely across all legislative bodies.  

If used, the URI needs to be in the 
form baseURI/(Congress,Session? | Year)/Measure Identifier (e.g., H. R., AB, 
etc.)/Number[stage].  Note: slashes are used to separate elements of the 
URI and the stage is presented in brackets at the end of the 
URI.

 

Title: The title of the 
measure.

 

Creator:  If used, each 
legislature would need to determine the creator of legislation because of 
changes in creation brought about by the legislative process.  However, 
when the creator is an individual, the format of the individual's name must be 
lastname, firstname [locale identification]).  If multiple individuals are 
creators, a semi-colon should be used to separate the individual names.  In 
the case of Federal legislation, the creator of an introduced measure is the 
sponsor (lastname, firstname [state and district].  Measures reported by a 
committee are created by that committee and presented by an individual, in which 
case two creator elements may be used.  Measures that are engrossed 
(enacted by one body) or enrolled (enacted by both bodies and readied for 
presentation to the Executive) are created by the appropriate legislative 
body.  An element entry in the form of a URI is also recommended in order 
to uniquely identify individual legislators (at least within that body) 
regardless of name and/or locale changes over time.

 

Description: A description of the 
measure.  

 

Subject: At this point, see the DCMI 
explanation.

 

Description/Table of Contents: A 
listing of major headings within the measure.

 

Date: The date the measure is 
introduced, reported, engrossed, enrolled, etc.  The choice of date versus 
legislative date is up to the legislature.  Date is presented in an 
optional alternative approach that includes reference to the W3DTF format for 
the date.

 

Type: See DCMI 
explanation.

 

Format: See DCMI 
explanation.

 

Language: See DCMI 
explantion.

 

Rights: See DCMI 
explanation.

 

 

===================================

EXAMPLE

===================================

 

<?xml 
version="1.0"?>

 

<metadata

  
xmlns="http://www.oasis-open.org/legis-metadata"

  
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"

  
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.oasis-open/legis-metadata/metadata.xsd"

  
xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"

  
xmlns:dcterms="http://purl.org/dc/terms/">

 

 

  <dc:coverage 
xsi:type="dcterms:TGN">United States</dc:coverage>

 

  <dc:coverage>United 
States House of Representatives</dc:coverage>

 

  <dc:identifier>108 H. 
R. 12 IH<dc:identifier>

 

  <dc:identifier 
xsi:type="dcterms:URI">http://www.us-congress.gov/108/HR/12[IH]<dc:identifier>

 

  <dc:identitfier 
xsi:type="dcterms:URL">http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:hr12:</dc:identifier>

 

  <dc:title>Jobs and 
Growth Tax Act of 2003</dc:title>

 

  <dc:creator>McKeon, 
Howard P. (Buck) [CA-25]</dc:creator>

 

  <dc:creator 
xsi:type="dcterms:URI">http://bioguide.congress.gov/M000508</dc:creator>

 

  <dc:description>To make 
changes to the Higher Education Act of 1965 incorporating the results of the FED 
UP Initiative, and for other purposes.</dc:description>

 

   <dc:description 
xsi:type="dcterms:tableOfContents">Sec. 1. Short title; table of 
contents.  Sec. 2. Reference; effective date; implementation.  Title 
I-Technical Amendments  Sec. 101. Technical amendments.  Sec. 102. 
Clerical amendments.  Sec. 103. Study of teacher preparation.  Title 
II-Student Loan Forgiveness  Sec. 201. Cancellation of student loan 
indebtedness for spouses, surviving joint debtors, and parents.  Title 
III-Opportunities for Higher Education via Telecommunications  Sec. 301. 
Exception to 50 percent correspondence course limitations. Sec. 302. Evaluation 
and report<dc:description>

 

  <dc:subject> 
</dc:subject>

 

  
<dc:date>2003-01-07</dc:date>

 

  <dcterms:modified 
refines="dc:date" 
xsi:type="dcterms:W3CDTF">2003-01-07</dcterms:modified>

 

  
<dc:type>text</dc:type>

 

  <dc:format 
xsi:type="dcterms:IMT">text/xml</dc:format>

 

  <dc:language 
xsi:type="dcterns:RFC3066">eng-US</dc:language>

 

  <dc:rights>This 
information is a U.S. Government Publication. Works by the U. S. Government are 
not eligible for U. S. copyright 
protection.</dc:rights>

 

</metadata>

 

 

 

**********************************************

Joe Carmel

Chief, Legislative Computer 
Systems

Office of the 
Clerk

US House of 
Representatives

2401 Rayburn 
House Office Building

Washington, 
DC 20515

202-225-1182 Fax: 
202-225-6826

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