Resource Aggregation Models for Learning, Education and Training

Resource aggregation is the process of gathering digital resources, describing their structures, 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 Working Group 13 RAMLET project includes a base standard that defines a conceptual model including 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-ORE) expressed as mappings to the core ontology are also being developed.

Documents available for download can be accessed by clicking on the Documentslink in the top left hand menu or on RAMLET documents

The RAMLET URI Registry contains a register of URIs and URLs for all ontology versions accompanying RAMLET Documents, including a URI which will automatically retrieve the latest version of an ontology. Ontology files may be downloaded by using the appropriate URI/URL found in the URI Registry. The URI Registry is available at RAMLET URI Registry