MediaWiki interoperability framework for multimedia digital resources

The success of the collaborative web-based MediaWiki platform, widely used in several projects to exchange knowledge created a new idea to use this system as a low-tech interoperability and repository layer for data providers, end users, developers and project partners. Facilitating the acquisition of knowledge for multimedia digital resources is a task that usually requires special purpose interfaces with which users are not familiar. The method effectively enables data providers to publish their metadata about multimedia content in the field of biodiversity in a push-operation to a metadata repository through a familiar interface like MediaWiki templates. The workflow then involves a procedure for automatic metadata harvesting into Fedora Commons repository, combined with the automatic creation of repository reports written to wiki pages in order to ensure a feedback to the data providers and end users. Models, techniques, standards and protocols used in the KeyToNature project make MediaWiki a layered candidate in achieving interoperability at the syntactic and semantic level with a low technological entry barrier.