It’s a couple of months now since my last update on progress with EODEM (the Exhibition Object Data Exchange Model) – so what have we been doing? The short answer is: issued a further draft of the standard; and drawn up a stylesheet which demonstrates how XSLT can be used to transform a heavily-nested EODEM LIDO XML document into a flatter structure (actually CSV, as flat as they come), closer to many that used by many collections management systems.

We’ve also been agonising over how best to document EODEM. The question has arisen as we’ve been trying to generate a formal EODEM XML Schema, and a richer Schematron to help pinpoint errors in EODEM documents: eating our own dog food, we’ve discovered that the current units of information defined in our profile don’t map nicely to the LIDO structure in which they will be encoded.

The newly-released draft standard is therefore likely to be superseded before too long by one which looks radically different – although the EODEM LIDO record which it defines should be very similar to that described in the current version. (The only substantive change we anticipate making is the replacement of some text values with URIs: we’re waiting on Collections Trust to finalise a framework for referring to Spectrum units of information using persistent, dereferenceable URIs.)

For reference, here’s a summary of the changes made in our new (version 0.06) profile:

• Typing moved from descriptiveNoteValue @label to objectDescriptionSet @type, and eventual replacement by Spectrum unit of information URI noted, in Brief Description
• Values of eventDescriptionSet @type updated, and eventual replacement by Spectrum unit of information URIs noted, in Insurance/Indemnity, Condition Of Object, Handling, Transport, Condition Checking, Hazards, Installation Method, Display Method, Security, Photography And Filming
• Recommendation to use embedded image metadata for image rights information added to Image Group
• Spectrum terms added to Appendix 2

Next steps are to identify, in collaboration with the LIDO Working Group, precisely what form our documentation needs to take, and reorganise our working files accordingly – this probably won’t be trivial. We’ll then work on updating them, and the accompanying stylesheets, so that we can produce a master XML document, from which in turn we will be able to generate whatever documentation files we need, and an EODEM Schema and Schematron. As always, I’ll keep you posted on progress via this site.