Resource Aggregation Models for Learning, Education and Training

Resource aggregation is the process of gathering digital resources, describing their structure, and often collecting or referring to their metadata so that the resulting resource aggregation can be used for transmission, storage, and delivery to users.  Individual communities have developed different aggregation formats, each focusing on that community's special needs and requirements. There is a need to exchange resource aggregations between communities that may be using different aggregation formats. In these cases, it is necessary to map between aggregation formats.

The IEEE LTSC WG13 RMLT Working Group is defining a conceptual model that includes an ontology and a nomenclature for enabling the interpretation of externalized representations of digital aggregates of resources for learning, education, and training applications.  The conceptual model facilitates interoperability by providing an ontology that can be used to represent and compare a variety of resource aggregation formats.

Interoperability may be achieved by the creation of crosswalks among the various aggregation standards and specifications. Five mapping recommended practices for some of the commonly used aggregation formats (IMS CP, MPEG-21 DID, METS, ATOM and OAI-PMH ORE) expressed as mappings to the core ontology are also being developed.   

In addition, the conceptual model standard may serve as a common reference for the development and evolution of standards and specifications for resource aggregations and may assist the development of profiles that maximize interoperability between the various aggregation formats.

The working group has completed all research for the standard, and a draft standard is expected to be available for balloting by the end of May.

The working group has completed most of the research for creating the associated mapping recommended practices. Drafts are expected to be available for balloting within 3 months after balloting has started for the standard.

Public Working Group Artifacts:

RAMLET Project Description:  Developing a reference model for resource aggregation for learning, ecucation, and training. This document describes the Ramlet project to produce an IEEE standard that will define a reference model for resource aggregation.

RAMLET Core Ontology v6:  This is the version of the ontology that incorporates all the changes agreed during the Orlando meeting. The main changes are the collapse of the old DigitalResource and PropertyObject classes, and the re-use of external vocabularies for some of the properties.

Draft RAMLET to CP:  Just a sketch to illustrate the OWL DL and Lite issue I talked about on the 8 Dec call. The issue is the local restrictions on the properties.

RAMLET Core Ontology:  This is intended to be the URL of whatever is the latest version of the core RAMLET ontology. Version information is included in the OWL file itself. Current version (14 August 2008) is 0.9.12

RAMLET Core to CP Mapping: This is intended to be the permanent place for the RAMLET core ontology to IMS Content Packaging mapping. Versions will change, though. As of 14 August 2008, the version is 0.9.99

RAMLET Core to METS Mapping: This is intended to be the permanent place for the mapping of the core RAMLET ontology to METS. Current version (14 August 2008) is 0.2.95

RAMLET Core to Atom Mapping: This is intended to be the permanent place for the mapping of the core RAMLET ontology to IETF Atom. Current version (14 August 2008) is 0.1.8

RAMLET Core to MPEG 21 DID Mapping: This is intended to be the permanent place for the mapping of the core RAMLET ontology to METS. Current version (14 August 2008) is 0.9.87

XLink Ontology:  This simple ontology models the W3C's Xlink specification (http://www.w3.org/TR/xlink/). As of August 14 2008, the version is 0.1