Context and Meaning: The Challenges of Metadata for a Digital Image Library within the University

Abstract

To be successful in the university environment, a digital library must be able to integrate content from faculty and students, as well as traditional library sources. It must have a robust metadata structure that can accommodate and preserve a variety of discipline-specific metadata while supporting consistent access across collections. As part of the Mellon-funded project, the Visual Image User Study at Penn State, a prototype centralized digital image delivery service was created and explored. In creating a metadata schema for the project, the authors anticipated both a wide variety of content and users across many disciplines.This schema employed three very different standards (VRA Core Categories, Dublin Core, IMS Learning Objects Meta-data).The project validated the need for highly individualized content, the importance of individual faculty collections, the need for editorial intervention to supplement and modify contributed metadata, and the importance of addressing discipline-specific vocabularies and taxonomies.igital libraries are developed within a context, and that context determines the character of the design. Most digital libraries are organized and administered by libraries, but many exist within a university system. In this context, the teaching and research functions of the university are determining factors. Members of the university community are rapidly becoming accustomed to using digital objects in their teaching and research. They have their own content (both digital and not-yet-digital), and they seek additional content relevant to their work. Faculty members are also likely to be users of university course management systems that provide an electronic environment for the classroom experience and which make digital learning objects available to their students. If a digital library is to be successful in this environment, it must integrate these sources of content and these systems into its design. This paper seeks to validate one aspect of this argument-the design of an appropriate metadata infrastructure-based on the authors' participation in a project to study the needs of users of images in an academic environment.

Application Profile Development for Consortial Digital Libraries

“…In their article about the challenges of metadata in university digital libraries, Attig, Copeland, and Pelikan assert that successful digital libraries must have a "robust metadata structure that can accommodate and preserve a variety of discipline-specific metadata while supporting consistent access across collections." 4 In a 2004 study of Australian digital collections, Hider finds that respondents think using already established standards when describing digital collections is very important. 5 Bruce and Hillmann point out that while the library community is comfortable with attempting to quantify and measure quality, as evidenced by the acceptance of the BIBCO core record, this acceptance must take place at the community level, and that "most metadata communities outside of libraries are not yet at the point where they have begun to define, much less measure, quality."…”

Metadata for Special Collections in CONTENTdm: How to Improve Interoperability of Unique Fields Through OAI-PMH

“…However, it should be noted that information loss is unavoidable in mapping because semantic meanings tend to be at least subtly different in each metadata standard as well as in each digital library (Attig, Copeland & Pelikan, 2004).…”

Retrieving and using visual resources: Challenges and opportunities for research and education

“…To resolve this problem, new types of image retrieval systems based on color, shape or texture have been developed. However, studies show that searching images by words remains the preferred method (Eakins, Briggs, & Burford, 2004), and concepts are considered important in image retrieval (Attig, Copeland, & Pelikan, 2004;Enser, 2000;Frost, et al, 2000). To support searching images by words, it is not only necessary to describe visual information to provide access, but also to understand user behavior in searching for images.…”