1. I Never Met a Data I Didn’t Like Metadata Issues in Local and Shared Digital Collections Presentation to ALCTS Electronic Resources Interest Group January 21, 2006 By Carol Hixson Head, Metadata and Digital Library Services University of Oregon Libraries https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/dspace/handle/1794/2073

2. UO’s Digital Collections Home http://libweb.uoregon.edu.diglib.search.html

3. Factors affecting selection of metadata  Metadata schema  Content standards  Software  Target audience  How is it being created or supplied?  Functions it serves

4. Metadata schema  MARC21  Dublin Core  VRA Core  EAD  ONIX  GILS  CSDGM/FGDC

5. Content standards  AACR2/RDA  Western States Dublin Core Metadata Best Practices  LCSH, TGM, AAT, ULAN, and other controlled vocabularies

6. Software considerations  Underlying metadata it supports or requires  OAI compatible  Ability to export metadata from the system  Labels and ease of changing them  Ability to customize fields for display and searching  Default public records  Built-in search interfaces  Support for authority control  Global change capabilities  Administrative interface

7. Target audience  General public  Academic (K-12, college, university, students, teachers, etc.)  Specialized discipline (artists, economists, scientists, etc.)  Distinct cultural community (native peoples, ethnic groups, linguistic groups, etc.)  Age  Impairments (vision, hearing, dyslexia, literacy)  Open or restricted access

8. How is it being created or supplied?  Human supplied  Trained staff or the general public  Machine generated

9. Functions it serves  Descriptive or discovery  Administrative  Technical or preservation  Relationship or linkage  Structural metadata

10. Dublin Core Metadata Element Set  15 optional and repeatable elements  Widely touted for interoperability – OAI  Supposed to be easy to apply  Criticized for lack of content standards for most elements  Criticized for leaving some key elements out and for unnecessarily duplicating others

11. Scholars’ Bank https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/

12. Logical or useful presentation

13. Metadata challenges for group projects  Field labels  Content standards for fields  Searching aggregated metadata

14. Metadata challenges  Project participants have agreed to follow the Western States Dublin Core Metadata Best Practices, version 2.0  The standards provide considerable latitude for some elements  Some participants are harvesting from legacy collections that were created without reference to these standards

15. Application of metadata standards  Digitization Specifications  Mandatory and repeatable  Not mapped to a Dublin Core element  Refers to a variety of standards  Lot of local latitude in:  labeling field  input standards

16. Application of metadata standards  Date.Original and Date.Digital  Both fields are mandatory (when applicable)  Western States Best Practices document gives clear guidance  Both map to Dublin Core Date  Both say to follow W3C – Date Time Format  yyyy-mm-dd (1897-07-16 for July 16, 1897)

17. No mapping to encoding schema

18. Inconsistent search results

19. Type recommendations

20. Advanced search

21. Contact information Carol Hixson Head, Metadata and Digital Library Services University of Oregon Libraries chixson@uoregon.edu 541-346-3064