Moving towards shareable metadata

Shreeves, Sarah L.; Riley, Jenn; Milewicz, Liz

doi:10.5210/fm.v11i8.1386

Cited by 30 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…In addition, these additional fields used provided descriptive information about the resources that was more specific and nuanced than could be achieved using standard Dublin Core elements. However, consistent with findings from Jackson et al (2008) and Shreeves et al (2006), we found that the frequent use of unique fields that make native metadata rich in context can impede interoperability if the field names are too unique and specific. This is because the contextual information associated with fields in the local environment, including more fulsome labeling, will be lost when the metadata is harvested by aggregators in Dublin Core format.…”

Section: Conclusion and Recommendationssupporting

confidence: 79%

“…For this reason, although the mapping seemed right in a broad sense, such as <country> to <spatial> and <local call number> to <identifier>, information displayed in the aggregators' environments can seem confusing and ambiguous to users. Unless values in the more specific locally defined field are carefully crafted, mapping for a granular local field to a more generalized Dublin Core element cannot convey the same precise, unambiguous meaning as it does in locally customized applications (Shreeves et al, 2006). We recommend that fields useful only in the local context (e.g., local call number) are not exported to service providers.…”

Section: Specificity and Granularitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition, problems entailing semantic ambiguity/vagueness and semantic overlaps in certain elements of Dublin Core, for example, <type> and <format>, <source>, and <relation> (Park, 2006;Jackson et al, 2008;Park & Childress, 2009), also contribute to metadata quality issues when records are aggregated in service provider environments. Yet researchers also have found that even in the context of Simple Dublin Core, aggregated metadata quality can be improved by creating, from the outset, metadata intended to support interoperability (Bruce & Hillmann, 2004;Shreeves et al, 2006) or by the consistent and correct mapping of custom local metadata to Dublin Core and/or other widely adopted standards (Park, 2005;Jackson et al, 2008). In this paper we will look at a range of metadata record mapping issues in the CONTENTdm environment.…”

Section: Shareable Metadatamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Research on the importance of creating and providing interoperable metadata (i.e., sharable metadata) has evolved considerably in recent years, spurred on by the release and growing use of the Open Archives Initiatives Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH), 1 3 and disseminations from multiple recent and ongoing research projects in this domain (Bruce & Hillmann, 2004;Stvilia, Gasser, Twidale, Shreeves, & Cole, 2004;Shreeves et al, 2006;Elings & Weibel, 2007;Jackson et al, 2008). In addition, several projects built around metadata sharing have released best practices for creating interoperable metadata, for example, Best Practices for OAI Data Provider Implementations and Shareable Metadata (2005), 4 DLF MODS Implementation Guidelines for Cultural Heritage Materials (2006), 5 and Collaborative Digitization Program's Dublin Core Metadata Best Practices (2006).…”

Section: Shareable Metadatamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Being harvested by metadata aggregators is one way to expand user base and potentially increase use of a collection (Shreeves et al, 2006). In her 2006 report for the Digital Library Federation, Contexts and Contributions: Building the Distributed Library, Martha Brogan enumerates the now extensive use of OAI-PMH in the library community, noting, "As the digital content in repositories proliferates, efficient and consistent interoperability specifications are essential for effective downstream applications across a full spectrum of scholarly information arenas extending from e-research and e-learning to Web publishing and administrative computing," (Brogan, 2006, p. 2).…”

Section: Contentdm Dublin Core and Interoperabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

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

Han

Cho

Cole

et al. 2009

Journal of Library Metadata

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Collection curators develop locally defined unique fields to support local requirements. As per the guidelines of the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH), Simple DublinCore is the minimum requirement for exposing metadata to aggregators. Oftentimes the level of specificity of unique local fields is not translated well to Dublin Core, which may hinder the interoperability of the item metadata record. This paper researched 21 digital collections that were hosted in CONTENTdm. The objective was to explore the use and issues of unique fields in local context and recommend best practices that will increase the interoperability of metadata for special collections. KEYWORDS Dublin Core, metadata, mapping, CONTENTdm, OAI-PMH, interoperability, special collections, metadata standards INTRODUCTIONLibraries wanting to digitize and provide online access to their special collections content must balance the tension between the requirements of local portals providing custom access to such content and the needs of aggregators wanting to provide integrated search and discovery services across special [Hewitt & Panitch, 2003]; we define special collection for this paper as materials that need special care and arrangement, or collections of materials that have been assembled for specific themes.) To deal with unique characteristics and context of special collection items, customized metadata schemes that include uniquely named descriptive attributes are often created for use in local implementations. However external aggregators need to collect and search against standardized or at least normalized descriptive metadata records. This paper examines the use of locally defined unique fields in item-level metadata descriptions of digital surrogates held in 21 collections from 11 CONTENTdm repositories and then examines the issues encountered when trying to map such locally customized metadata records to Simple Dublin Core or Qualified Dublin Core in ways intended to optimize interoperability. CONTENTdm implementations are especially well suited for this sort of examination because the application gives implementers license to add locally defined metadata fields and the freedom to then map or not map these local fields to Dublin Core however the implementer sees fit for purposes of metadata record export. This paper stems in part from a finding described in the article Dublin Core Metadata Harvested through OAI-PMH (Jackson, Han, Groetsch, Mustafoff, & Cole, 2008). As described in this earlier paper, we found that "native metadata records are rich in meaning in their own environment, but lose richness in the aggregated environment due to the mapping errors and misunderstanding and misuse of Dublin Core elements" (Jackson et al., 2008, p. 18). This finding is closely related to a sharable metadata issue identified in a 2006 article by Shreeves, Riley, and Milewicz, that is, that "metadata may be of high quality within its local context, but may be compromised when taken out of this context for var...

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Section: Conclusion and Recommendationssupporting

confidence: 79%

Section: Specificity and Granularitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Shareable Metadatamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Shareable Metadatamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Contentdm Dublin Core and Interoperabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

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

Han

Cho

Cole

et al. 2009

Journal of Library Metadata

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Beyond size and search: Building contextual mass in digital aggregations for scholarly use

Palmer

Zavalina

Fenlon

2010

Proc. Am. Soc. Info. Sci. Tech.

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At present there are no established collection development methods for building large-scale digital aggregations. However, to realize the potential of the collective base of digital content and advance scholarship, aggregations must do more than provide search of sizable bodies of content. Informed by empirical understanding of scholarly information practices, the IMLS Digital Collections and Content project developed an aggregation strategy for building Opening History, one of the largest digital cultural heritage aggregations in the country. The strategy applied policy-driven collecting, based on the principle of contextual mass, and conspectus-style evaluation of collection-level metadata to identify strong subject areas within the aggregation. Analysis of density, interconnectedness, diversity, and small/large collection complementarity determined subject concentrations and thematic strengths to be prioritized for future collection development and used as organizational structures for browsing and visualization. The approach models how scholars build their own personal research collections, as they follow leads from collection to collection across institutions near and far, and adds value that cannot be achieved through conventional retrieval and browsing at the item-level.

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Principle violations revisiting the Dublin Core 1:1 Principle

Urban

2010

Proc of Assoc for Info

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Although many best practice documents encourage Dublin Core metadata creators to "obey the 1:1 Principle," this recommendation has proven "extremely confusing" in practice. The impact of this confusion is widespread violations of the Principle that inhibit the ability of largescale metadata aggregations to provide useful services. A preliminary operational definition of the 1:1 Principle that identifies of non-conformant descriptions is explored.

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Moving towards shareable metadata

Cited by 30 publications

References 5 publications

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

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

Beyond size and search: Building contextual mass in digital aggregations for scholarly use

Principle violations revisiting the Dublin Core 1:1 Principle

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