Metadata Guidelines for the Mountain West Digital Library: Who, What, Where, When, Why? CONTENTdm Users Group Meeting July 23, 2007 Portland, Oregon Vicki Toy Smith University of Nevada, Reno

Metadata Guidelines Project completion: 2006 Guidelines were developed by the Utah Academic Library Consortium Task Force (UALC’s Cataloging & Digitization Committees ) Goal: Improving metadata in the Mountain West Digital Library UALC member institutions had loosely followed the CDP (Collaborative Digitization Project) Dublin Core Metadata Best Practices guidelines

A need for best practices Implementation of the guidelines across various UALC institutions was inconsistent CDP best practices guidelines lacked good working examples for users to implement metadata guidelines In the initial meeting between the Cataloging and Digitization Committees, general problems with the Mountain West Digital Library’s (MWDL’s) metadata were discussed Task force examined differences between metadata & traditional cataloging

Dublin Core Metadata A universal metadata schema No consistency across projects using Dublin Core Documentation is not well-defined Intended for use by non-catalogers & specialists No MARC tags used with Dublin Core metadata Most libraries in our consortia use CDP Metadata Best Practices guidelines for CONTENTdm projects CDP Guidelines Version (September 2006): Linked from:

Mountain West Digital Library (MWDL) The Mountain West Digital Library is a consortium of digital collections from universities, public libraries, museums in Utah, Nevada, and Idaho Some institutions have collections on the Mountain West Digital Library (MWDL) website. Other institutions host their own collections: University of Utah, BYU, Utah State University, Southern Utah University, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, & University of Nevada, Reno, Weber State University, & Utah State Archives These digital libraries are aggregated in a single, searchable index hosted at the University of Utah: In addition, some UALC partner institutions have collections featured on the MWDL website Partner institutions include: Murray City Library, Topaz Museum, Uintah County Library, Utah State Historical Society

Issues confronting the Task Force Differences between metadata and traditional cataloging were examined Constructing metadata is different than building a catalog However, structured discipline used in cataloging could improve the consistency of the MWDL metadata

Task Force Members Molly Beisler – University of Nevada, Reno Randy Christensen – Southern Utah University John Herbert – University of Utah Kathy Rankin – University of Nevada, Las Vegas Vicki Toy Smith – University of Nevada, Reno Mary Taylor – University of Nevada, Reno Cheryl Walters – Utah State University Kayla Willey (contributed early) – BYU Kathryn Etcheverria – (contributed later) University of Nevada, Reno

Mission of the Task Force GOAL: Development of metadata examples for digital library item types CDP Dublin Core Metadata Best Practices guidelines used However, examples were tailored for the MWDL and CONTENTdm digital asset management software

Examples developed by task force members Postcard Journal article Diary Dissertation Compound object (Book, Individual Page, Newspaper Issue, Newspaper Page, Newspaper article) Audio Film/Video Photograph Ephemera (Show program) Artwork Map Architectural/Technical Drawings Letter

Metadata Guidelines Following our discussions, we decided to write a document that contained the 14 types of metadata examples These examples explained how to structure the metadata (which was developed for a specific item type) Resulting set of examples, plus other considerations and recommendations are presented on the MWDL web site The last link on the “about” page of the MWDL web site contains the guidelines completed in 2006: Direct link to the file: Finalized Metadata Examples

Further Development With knowledge and experience with metadata and aggregations the document will undergo revisions. However, the present document should assist in the development of today’s digital libraries.

Thank you! Vicki Toy Smith, Principal Cataloger University of Nevada, Reno www2.library.unr.edu/vicki/