Discovery Metadata for Special Collections Concepts, Considerations, Choices William E. Moen School of Library and Information Sciences Texas Center for Digital Knowledge University of North Texas Denton, TX Texas Library Association Annual Conference, March 18, 2004, San Antonio, TX

Moen TLA Annual Conference -- March 18, San Antonio, TX 2 Terminology: Metadata The result of processes (manual or automatic) performed on an object, where the result is a representation or derivative of salient features of the object Structured data associated with an object that supports a variety of user tasks including: Resource discovery Information management

Moen TLA Annual Conference -- March 18, San Antonio, TX 3 Terminology: Discovery Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) identified four tasks: To find materials that correspond to the user's stated search criteria To identify an entity To select an entity that is appropriate to the user's needs To acquire or obtain access to the entity described How do we represent objects through metadata to help users discover resources?

Moen TLA Annual Conference -- March 18, San Antonio, TX 4 Users and their needs Who are users of archives and special collection End users Researchers Students Local history aficionados Staff Metadata creators Archivists Librarians Technologists Software (e.g., search engines, metasearch applications, harvesters) How will they interact with the metadata

Moen TLA Annual Conference -- March 18, San Antonio, TX 5 Conceptual & decision framework

Moen TLA Annual Conference -- March 18, San Antonio, TX 6 Metadata choices: EAD Encoded Archival Description Standard method for presenting archival finding aids Includes two main parts: Header – describes the finding aid Archival description – describes the archival collection Uses Extensible Markup Language (XML) to mark up the finding aid Sample

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Moen TLA Annual Conference -- March 18, San Antonio, TX 8 Metadata choices: Library Catalog Record Uses traditional library cataloging practices Less detail than the finding aid approach Represented in MARC syntax Sample

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Moen TLA Annual Conference -- March 18, San Antonio, TX 10 Metadata choices: Dublin Core A simple resource description scheme geared towards discovery Fifteen basic elements Can be stored as metadata records in a database or embedded in HTML pages Sample

Moen TLA Annual Conference -- March 18, San Antonio, TX 11 Considerations: Standards, Rules, Quality Standard metadata schemes Why invent your own? Rules for creating metadata Often the standards provide guidelines and rules Consistent, complete, accurate metadata How to assess quality? Diane Hillmann’s quality measures: Completeness Provenance Accuracy Conformance to expectations Logical consistency or coherence Timeliness Accessibility

Moen TLA Annual Conference -- March 18, San Antonio, TX 12 Considerations: Interoperability Use and reuse of metadata Different applications may want to process the metadata Adherence to standard metadata element sets EAD Library cataloging practices Dublin Core Adherence to standards for encoding XML MARC HTML

Moen TLA Annual Conference -- March 18, San Antonio, TX 13 Considerations: Making objects visible Metadata can make objects visible for discovery Approaches Native interface for searching (e.g., TARO, TSLAC catalog) Web search engines Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting Exposing your metadata as Dublin Core records for harvesting via the OAI protocol Library of Texas Resource Discovery Service Metasearch application Standards-based using Z39.50 information retrieval protocol

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Moen TLA Annual Conference -- March 18, San Antonio, TX 15 TARO? Your Archives?

Moen TLA Annual Conference -- March 18, San Antonio, TX 16 Choices & Decisions Who are your users and how will they discover your resources? What standard metadata scheme best fits your objects and users? How will you assure quality of your metadata? How will you make your metadata visible?

Moen TLA Annual Conference -- March 18, San Antonio, TX 17 Selected References Dublin Core Metadata  Encoded Archival Description (EAD)  Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records   Library of Texas Resource Discovery Service  Open Archives Initiative for Metadata Harvesting  Hillmann & Bruce. The Continuum of Quality: Defining, Expressing, Exploiting (Draft preprint) 