No abstract

Considering the value of dates in the life cycle of the digital resource, capturing and storing dates metadata in a structured way can have a significant impact on information retrieval. There are a number of format conventions in common use for encoding the date and time values; the Extended Date/Time Format (EDTF) is one of the most expressive. This paper presents results of an exploratory analysis of representation of dates in over 8 million metadata records from one of the largest digital aggregators, Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), and compares it to EDTF specifications. This benchmark study provides empirical data -at both the individual provider level and the group level (content hubs or service hubs) -about the overall level and patterns of application of date metadata in DPLA metadata records in relation to EDTF.

Abstract. Evolving user needs and relevance require continuous change and reform. A good digital collection has mechanisms to accommodate the di®ering uses being made of the digital library system. In a metadata management context, change could mean to transform, substitute, or make the content of a metadata record di®erent from what it is or from what it would be if left alone. In light of the evolving compliance requirements, this paper analyses the three most common types of change within metadata records as well as their subcategories and discusses the possible implications of such changes within and beyond the metadata records.

Purpose – Increasingly, higher education institutions worldwide are accepting only electronic versions of their students’ theses and dissertations. These electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) frequently feature embedded URLs in body, footnote and references section of the document. Additionally the web as ETD subject appears to be on an upward trajectory as the web becomes an increasingly important part of everyday life. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – The authors analyzed URL references in 4,335 ETDs in the UNT ETD collection. Links were extracted from the full-text documents, cleaned and canonicalized, deconstructed in the subparts of a URL and then indexed with the full-text indexer Solr. Queries to aggregate and generate overall statistics and trends were generated against the Solr index. The resulting data were analyzed for patterns and trends within a variety of groupings. Findings – ETDs at the University of North Texas that include URL references have increased over the past 14 years from 23 percent in 1999 to 80 percent in 2012. URLs are being included into ETDs in the majority of cases: 62 percent of the publications analyzed in this work contained URLs. Originality/value – This research establishes that web resources are being widely cited in UNT's ETDs and that growth in citing these resources has been observed. Further it provides a preliminary framework for technical methods appropriate for approaching analysis of similar data that may be applicable to other sets of documents or subject areas.

Maintaining usable and sustainable digital collections necessitates maintaining high-quality metadata about those digital objects. The two aspects of digital library data quality are the quality of the data in the objects themselves, and the quality of the metadata associated with the objects. Because poor metadata quality can result in ambiguity, poor recall and inconsistent search results, the existence of robust quality assurance mechanisms is a necessary feature of a well-functioning digital library. In order for end users to benefit fully from the development of digital libraries, responsible and viable service providers need to address metadata quality issues.Based on the University of North Texas Libraries experiences, this paper discusses issues related to metadata quality management and demonstrates a number of tools, workflows and quality assurance mechanisms.