DiscoverEd Metadata
Contents
Overview
This document outlines the format in which ccLearn would like to receive syndication feeds for the data that will go into our OER database.
The data must be supplied in an Atom or RSS format. Both of these standards are in widespread use on the Internet for content syndication.
Presently, ccLearn is looking for the following data:
- Link: Full URL of the referenced resource.
- Title: A brief descriptive title for the resource.
- Summary: A relatively short summary/synopsis of the resource.
- License: This should be a URL to the license; e.g., http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/.
- Grade level (dc:educationLevel): What grade(s) or age-level(s) this material is suitable for.
- Language (xml:lang): The language(s) of the referenced resource (not of your site).
- Subject (cc:subject): The subject(s) of the resource; e.g., math.
NOTE: The sample Atom and RSS 2.0 feeds below mostly implement the minimum elements required by the respective specification plus the fields that ccLearn needs. For our purposes, a feed must minimally contain most of the elements in the examples below, but may also contain any other valid elements. Also, though we prefer an Atom feed, there is no reason that another type of feed cannot be used, as long as it is able to include all of the data CC needs AND includes the data in such a way that the Universal Feed Parser can extract it in a normalized way.
CC-specific categories (tags/fields)
The CC Specific fields do not have native Atom or RSS element definitions. For these fields we suggest that they be embedded as category or tag specifications (<category> in Atom) with a specific prefix. These have the general format of:
cc:<field>:<data>
For example, the <category> content for Subject would become something like:
cc:subject:Math
The Creative Commons-specific fields build upon existing category/tag support in feeds. Therefore any cc: field may be specified multiple times if needed. The fields we currently use for refining search results include:
- Subject: cc:subject:
Specifying Subject
The subject refers to the actual content in the resource; i.e., what is this resource about? For many resources, more than one subject will be necessary; in this case, specify multiple subject <category> elements. We ask that you try to limit the number of elements to only those subjects that are objectively reflective of the entire resource. If you want to include other types of categories (opinions, metrics, etc), please add those as normal (un-prefixed) <category> elements instead.
Specifying Education level
The education level should indicate all levels (student ages) for which the resource is deemed appropriate. The education level should be labeled using the dc:educationLevel term.
Though we will accept any descriptions that seem appropriate to you, please consider using one of the following schemas:
- primary, secondary, tertiary, adult;
- K,1,2,3,...,20 (where the number refers to the actual grade-level).
You may include equivalent terms as well by specifying more than one dc:educationLevel <category>. For example, you might include a dc:educationLevel for 9, 10, and secondary.
Specifying Language
When specifying the language for a resource, the value should be specified as described by RFC-3066. For example, en for English. To distinguish English (United States) from English (United Kindgom), the language would be specified as en-US and en-GB, respectively.
In an Atom 1.0 feed, the language is specified as the xml:lang attribute of the content element. Multiple languages in a single entry is not supported.
Embedding license data
Since the licensing of a resource is expected to be conveyed via URL, we can leverage the Atom <link> element. However we must markup the link element so as to identify it as a license URL. This is accomplished with adding the attribute rel="license" to the <link> element. For example:
<link rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/" />
See the complete CC with syndication formats documentation for more information.
Examples
Atom 1.0 example
Here is a sample, one entry Atom 1.0 feed which implements the guidelines above.
<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
<id>http://oersite.org/cc/</id>
<title>OER Aggregation Web Site</title>
<updated>2008-01-16T12:00:00Z</updated>
<link rel="self" href="http://oersite.org/cc/atom.xml" type="application/atom+xml" />
<author>
<name>John Q. Public</name>
<email>webmaster@oersite.org</email>
</author>
<entry>
<id>tag:ocw.org,2007-10-15:/math/101</id>
<updated>2007-10-15T12:00:00Z</updated>
<link href="http://ocw.org/math/101" />
<title>Math 101</title>
<summary>Basic mathematics for 5th graders</summary>
<link rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/" />
<category term="cc:subject:Math" />
<category term="dc:educationLevel:5" />
<content type="xhtml" xml:lang="en">The content</content>
</entry>
</feed>
