Page History

1) What is the purpose of the TERENA OER portal initiative? (The motivation and the high-level architectural issue)

Fundamental questions must be clarified in a white paper about:

• how we can be different form others;
• what kind of repository we are proposing;
• what objects we are collecting;
• what tools we are planning to use;
• who the target user community is;
• how this initiative can be positioned in the context of global and other national activities
• and so on...

AGREEMENT

A paper must be drafted that summarizes the basic principles behind the TERENA OER portal initiative, gives a high-level view on the problem space in a European/global context, as well as define a common language, system architecture, and framework for recommendations. Potential issues must be addressed by the paper are:

• Dealing with multiple languages
• Understanding the users' requirements
• Supporting national repositories (with knowledge and tools)
• Aggregation of open materials
• Flexible metadata schema
• Focus on easy-to-use tools and procedures
• Understanding on existing metadata and practices already available in the community

The paper can then be agreed and presented at LAK2013 (April 2013, in Leuven Belgium) and TNC2013 (June 2013, in Maastricht, Netherlands)

ACTION 1 on Eli Shmueli (IUCC) to draft a paper (bullet points are sufficient to start with) and circulate it on the mailing list. Others are invited to contribute.

2) TERENA OER pilot implementation (The technical issue)

Proof of Concept metadata harvesting from SWITCHCollection to the MAOR test portal has been done. Lessons learned: it is technically possible, but there are issues with both a) the metadata quality and b) the openness of content.

The next steps we should take are:

• Start small with sharing and aggregating of (fully) open materials
• Look around what other projects do (in Europe, Brazil, etc.) not to reinvent the wheel.
• Promote the use of the European portal and involve in global initiatives.

AGREEMENT

A deep technical dialogue must be started among the portal technology developers (MAOR, ARIADNE), the national repository owners (SWITCHCollection, Campus do Mar, Kaunas University, etc.) and the university people representing the end-user community. The discussion should include topics as follows:

• Metadata schema for aggregation, mapping, translation, etc.
• Potential functional integration of ARIADNE (as an aggregator) and MAOR (as a portal)
• Tools, protocols, procedures, implementation options.

ACTION 2 on Peter Szegedi (TERENA) to Doodle for a technical meeting as soon as possible.

3) Mini-survey about metadata (The metadata issue)

Concerns have been shared by the attendees about the finding of good quality metadata, the willingness of content owners to improve metadata, and about the aggregation of metadata in an easy way.

AGREEMENT

University people participating in TF-Media must be our anchors in the community to figure out what's going on in this field at the national/institutional levels. What kind of metadta is generated, how that existing metadata can be exposed, what tools are there for aggregation/harvesting, etc.

ACTION 3 on Giannis Stoitsis (GRNET) to draft some questions for the mini-survey and circulate them on the mailing list. After agreement, the final set of questions can be sent to the national/institutional repository owners as well as to the academic community for gathering answers.

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