Indecs Content Model - The Indecs Framework

The Indecs Framework

The indecs analysis supports interoperability of at least five different types:

• Across media (such as books, serials, audio, audiovisual, software, abstract works, visual material).
• Across functions (such as cataloguing, discovery, workflow and rights management).
• Across levels of metadata (from simple to complex).
• Across semantic barriers.
• Across linguistic barriers.

The indecs project developed a framework, described in detail in the final project documents, within which such interoperability could be achieved. indecs proposed four principles as key to the management of identification:

• The principle of Unique Identification: every entity should be uniquely identified within an identified namespace.
• The principle of Functional Granularity: it should be possible to identify an entity whenever it needs to be distinguished
• The principle of Designated Authority: the author of an item of metadata should be securely identified.
• The principle of Appropriate Access: everyone requires access to the metadata on which they depend, and privacy and confidentiality for their own metadata from those who are not dependent on it.

indecs also produced a useful definition of metadata:

• An item of metadata is a relationship that someone claims to exist between two referents (entities).

The indecs framework stresses the significance of relationships, which lie at the heart of the indecs analysis. It underlines the importance of unique identification of all entities (since otherwise expressing relationships between them is of little practical utility). Finally, it raises the question of authority: the identification of the person making the claim is as significant as the identification of any other entity.

(Note: describing metadata as linking two referents may seem unusual: the point is that an unambiguous piece of metadata has to relate to precise enough things - referents - at each end of the link (e.g. my CAR is GREEN) to make a useful statement. "Precise enough" is contextual. "Green" might be a perfectly precise enough referent if the namespace it's coming from (where we are referring to, and the application we are interested in) is dealing with "what colour is your car: green, red, blue, black, or white...?"; but not if it's intended to describe precisely a green colour to a garage to respray your car following an accident, when you would need to say e.g. "Ford Colour ref 3456/2009 Metallic Green".)

The underlying assumptions or axioms of the indecs approach are (1) Metadata is critical; (2) Stuff is complex; (3): Metadata is modular; and (4) Transactions need automation.