perusehdon

Perusehdon is a hypothetical data management framework designed to organize, index, and retrieve scholarly documents across distributed repositories. It envisions a unified approach to metadata, provenance, and semantic search to improve discovery and interoperability among libraries, archives, and publishers.

The name combines "peruse," reflecting careful reading, with "don," from data organization networks, signaling its role as a portable descriptor set for documents. In this conceptual model, perusehdon defines a core schema, descriptor blocks, and a federation protocol that enables cross-repository queries while preserving source provenance.

Core components include the Perusehdon Core Schema (P-CS), which models documents, metadata, and relationships; Perusehdon Descriptors, lightweight metadata bundles attached to items; and a Federation Layer that allows interoperable search across participating repositories. The query protocol supports semantic search, facet navigation, and provenance-aware filtering, ensuring users can trace data back to its origin.

History and usage: Perusehdon emerged in information science thought experiments in the 2010s as a way to discuss improvements in metadata interoperability. While there is no standard implementation, the concept has influenced discussions around schema design, API governance, and user-centric interfaces in digital libraries. Several prototype projects have explored elements of perusehdon, typically as proof-of-concept demonstrations rather than production systems.

Reception and impact: Advocates argue perusehdon illustrates how integrated metadata and provenance tracking can enhance discovery, reproducibility, and trust. Critics note the challenges of achieving consensus on schemas, the overhead of maintaining federation, and potential performance trade-offs in large-scale deployments. The term remains primarily academic and illustrative in current discourse.