A centre of expertise in digital information management

www.ukoln.ac.uk

Metadata - what works, what doesn’t?

Stephanie TaylorUKOLN, University of Bath

E - s.taylor@ukoln.ac.uk

UKOLN is supported by:This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 licence (but note caveat)

A centre of expertise in digital information management

www.ukoln.ac.uk 2

About MeStephanie Taylor:

• Work with UKOLN as a research officer• Work on the practical side of institutional

repositories• Worked on the first phase of the RSP

UKOLN:• National centre of expertise in digital

information management• Located at the University of Bath

A centre of expertise in digital information management

www.ukoln.ac.uk 3

What Is Metadata?Metadata is structured information

that describes, explains, locates, or otherwise makes it easier to retrieve, use, or manage an information resource.

Source: NISO (2004) Understanding Metadata. Bethesda, NISO Press.

A centre of expertise in digital information management

www.ukoln.ac.uk 4

Metadata is…Structured data about “something”

• Text• Images• Sound• Movement• Objects• Events• Services

A centre of expertise in digital information management

www.ukoln.ac.uk 5

Metadata is…Encountered every day

• Timetables• Directories• Internet shopping sites, etc

A centre of expertise in digital information management

www.ukoln.ac.uk 6

Metadata is…Stored in -

• Databases, repositories• Web pages

Carriers• Formats (e.g. MARC)• Markup languages (e.g. HTML, SGML,

XML)

A centre of expertise in digital information management

www.ukoln.ac.uk 7

Types of metadataDescriptive

Structural

Administrative• Rights management metadata• Preservation metadata

A centre of expertise in digital information management

www.ukoln.ac.uk 8

Why do you need it?•To enable discovery of your digitised material

• To enable harvesting of your digitised material by external systems

• To help you organise your digitised material

• To support archiving and preservation

A centre of expertise in digital information management

www.ukoln.ac.uk 9

Metadata SchemasA metadata scheme is a sets of metadata elements designed for a specific purpose, such as describing a particular type of information resource.

A centre of expertise in digital information management

www.ukoln.ac.uk 10

Current Standards“Standards are like toothbrushes, everyone agrees that they’re a good idea but nobody wants to use anyone else’s.” From a Murtha Baca presentationDublin Core (Simple, Qualified, Application Profiles)MARC, ONIXEADMODS, METS, DIDL, PREMIS, MIX, RSLP-CD etc.

A centre of expertise in digital information management

www.ukoln.ac.uk 11

Out of the box…Realistically most people when first establishing online digitised resource will work with what comes out of the box … but fields can be added and schemes customised. Explore types and field structures at an early stage and set up your metadata scheme. Consider local needs such as departmental and project work structures and any local decisions needed about subject fields etc.

A centre of expertise in digital information management

www.ukoln.ac.uk 12

The “Other” RepositoriesWhat *might* be a repository?

• Flickr?• Google Docs?• YouTube?• SlideShare?• Wikipedia?• Twitter?

A centre of expertise in digital information management

www.ukoln.ac.uk 13

Folksonomy & Tagging Metadata for the people, by the peopl

• Keywords• Descriptive• Created by and for human beings• Inconsistent• Personal• Shared• Created on the fly• Unstructured