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Hi Everyone,

Cornell and UVA are working jointly on a Mellon-funded project to
develop open source repository software based on the Fedora design for
objects and repositories.  As part of this project we would like to use
METS as an underlying encoding scheme for storing our digital objects.
We have mapped the Fedora object model to METS and most things relate
nicely, however, Fedora has the notion of a "Disseminator" which
essentially associates executable code with the object.  We have a
proposal for the METS group to consider on allowing METS to support the
association of disseminators with an object.  We have run our ideas by
Jerry McDonough and he was supportive of the concept, however, the
details of how we would do this requires some discussion.

I have sent along a set of attachments for your consideration.
Hopefully these will help you see what we have in mind, and not
overwhelm you with more detail! :-)

Thorny Staples and I will be attending the METS meeting at the end of
this week, so maybe this topic can be addressed at some point in the
meeting.

Here's a rundown of the attachments:

1.  proposedChanges.doc - this describes what we are thinking.  If you
only have time to read one thing, this will summarize our ideas with
examples.  The other attachments are complete examples of Fedora objects
encoded in METS.

2.  METS_image_dobj3a.xml - this is a sample Fedora digital object
encoded in METS.  It represents UVA's content model for their image
collections.

3.  METS_Img1_sig.xml - a Fedora "Behavior Definition Object" encoded in
METS.  This Behavior Definition Object stores metadata and content that
essentially defines an interface for viewing images.  The image content
object (#2 above) points to this object via a METS <mptr>.

4.  METS_Img1_servlet.xml  - a Fedora "Behavior Mechanism Object"
encoded in METS. This Behavior Mechanism Object stores executable code
that implements the image viewing behaviors defined in #3 above.  The
image content object points to this object via a METS <mptr>.

5.  METS_FedoraDC_sig.xml  - just like #3 above, except this object
defines a set of behaviors for obtaining Dublin Core records from a
Fedora digital object.

6.  METS_FedoraUVAtoDC_servlet.xml - just like #4 above, except this
object implements the Dublin Core behaviors defined in #5.

See you in Pittsburgh,
Sandy and Thorny