Design And Implementatin Of Chinese Genealogy Metadata Scheme Based On XML

With the increasing awareness of tracing roots and ancestors, innumerous volumes of genealogies are required both by the public and scientific institutes. As an effective way to realize the information sharing, much attention has been focused on the research of genealogy metadata. To date, several problems have appeared in the collection, storage, management and the use of genealogy metadata.①The metadata has various types, and it is difficult to share and has been stocked up diversely. Besides, its collection, maintenance and access is lack of an unique manageme.②The metea ta treats the genealogy more as kinds of bibliography and literature, considering it less as the glorious historical records of a family. Thus the genealogies cannot be represented comprehensively by the metadata③The mining and expression of spatio-temporal information in metadata did not get enough attention. The spatio-temporal information was only described in text in metadata, which make it impossible to be retrieved and utilized. Accordingly, this paper aims at studying the application of metadata technology in genealogy information managing and sharing.Based on the genealogy metadata sharing and genealogy GIS building, this paper analyzed the characteristics of Chinese genealogy from the aspects of the shape, the structure and the family features of Chinese genealogy, by referencing the existing research achievements on metadata and genealogy both at home and abroad. Accordingly, a comprehensive genealogy metadata scheme which pays sufficient attention on the spatio-temporal information of the genealogy is constructed. Furthermore, the Chinese genealogy metadata information system was developed for verifying the well-designed genealogy metadata scheme. The system consists of data acquisition and management subsystem and information sharing and serving subsystem, which can effectively serves the collection, retrieve, management, and sharing of millions of Chinese genealogies.The research achievements of this paper are as follows:1) The Chinese genealogy metadata scheme based on XML (draft)This paper constructs a genealogy metadata model in terms of a uniform spatio-temporal framework, which is consists of head information, bibliography management information, structural information and family features information, etc. A genealogy metadata organizing scheme has been defined for metadata exchange. Each component of the model has been described in detail. Moreover, a genealogy metadata framework based on the genealogy metadata model is designed. The metadata scheme is described by XML Schema, so it is easy to be expressed, translated, displayed, queried and used effectively and normally.2) The Chinese genealogy metadata information system (prototype system)The Chinese genealogy metadata information system is designed according to Chinese genealogy metadata scheme and the characteristics of genealogy resources management and sharing. The well-designed overall systematic framework, system functions, database and the specific functional modules are all illustrated in detail.