FactMiners.org is very pleased to announce that we are adopting METS/ALTO as the "drill down" metadata and file/data format specifications that will guide our DSL (Domain Specific Language) extensions of the CIDOC-CRM as part of the design of the Open Source FactMiners LAM-based social-game platform.

The CIDOC-CRM is the ISO standard Conceptual Reference Model of the International Council of Museums (ICOM). As such, it has both metadata coverage as well as metamodel coverage of collections management process/workflow dimensions that are absent from more ontologically-focused metadata specifications.

FactMiners.org will use the CIDOC-CRM for guidance in designing the underlying digital collections management aspects of our platform while incorporating METS/ALTO metadata standards and applying best practices from its user community as we "piece the veil" to model the representational meaning (AKA "mine the facts") of an artifact/object. METS/ALTO will be especially key to providing the "article-level segmentation" needed to effectively model the complexity of our first digital archive, The Softalk Apple Project.

We are so excited to learn about the Library of Congress' "Chronicling America" program and website, along with affiliated LAM projects like the California Digital Newspaper Collection. We now have a good handle of how to proceed with our DSL extension of the CIDOC-CRM as explored in our award-winning Neo4j GraphGist: The "Self-Descriptive" Neo4j Graph Database: Embedded Metamodel Subgraphs in the FactMiners Social-Game Ecosystem.

Together, METS – the Metadata Encoding & Transmission Standard – and ALTO – Technical Metadata for Optical Character Recognition – give us an excellent roadmap and supporting technologies with which to drive the "last mile" of granularity whereby CIDOC-CRM-based collections management and preservation micro-tasks (AKA FactMiners gameplay) can be performed on the digital object's article-level content. FactMiners' elemental facts will be most meaningful when discovered and validated within an article-level segmented digital preservation object as the FactMiners "playing field".

With this new piece of our roadmap puzzle falling into place, we have a very good idea of how to revise Part 2 of our GraphGist about modeling the Softalk Magazine archive collection. So... full steam ahead! :-) More as it shapes up.