Metadata for Digital Collections: A How to Do it Manual

Citation

Ahangar, H. (2013), "Metadata for Digital Collections: A How to Do it Manual", Collection Building, Vol. 32 No. 2, pp. 73-74. https://doi.org/10.1108/01604951311322057

Metadata, in general, means data about data or information resources. With the rapid increase of internet resources and digital collections, a good number of metadata schemas have been proliferated. Metadata for Digital Collections: A How to Do it Manual by Stephen J. Miller indicates that good quality metadata is imperative for providing intellectual access to the ever‐increasing number of digital collections being created by libraries, archives, museums and historical societies. Without metadata, the collection would be almost pointless. Users have no mode to find and discover the digital objects in the collection. It introduces readers to fundamental concepts and practices in a style accessible to beginners, as well as practitioners with or without cataloguing and metadata familiarity.

The book under review is organised into 11 chapters. Each chapter starts with an introduction followed by sections, subsections with explanations and examples and finally concludes with summary and apposite references. Chapter 1 introduces basic metadata concepts, its types, functions and standards. The chapter seeks to clarify what the different authorities comment on metadata. Moreover, this chapter offers an overview of a fourfold typology of metadata standards that includes data structure standards, data content standards, data value standards and data format, technical interchange, or encoding standards. The chapter then moves on to present an outline of metadata design, creation and gives examples of diverse digital collection management software, such as Insight+Luna software, Greenstone digital library software, DSpace software, etc., with a chief focus on CONTENTdm software.

Chapter 2 familiarizes the readers with various fundamental concepts associated with metadata. These include resource description, granularity of description and element functionality. A general introduction to Dublin core metadata element set, one of the most widely used metadata schemes for cross‐domain information resource description, is also provided.

Chapters 3 and 4 cover Dublin core elements in more detail. They give readers deeper understanding of each type of element. Challenges and issues that arise in resource description are also highlighted.

Chapter 5 is devoted to controlled vocabularies, which are imperative for the effective search and retrieval of information resources. This chapter also makes a comparison between the Library of Congress Thesaurus for Graphic Materials (TGM) and The Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) by the Getty Institute, two accepted subject vocabularies intended for providing an extensive body of terms for subject access and indexing of pictorial materials.

The subsequent chapter gives a detailed introduction about metadata encoding and XML. It goes on to explain XML elements, attributes and metadata modularity. The chapter concludes with XML metadata record examples such as Dublin core in XML and Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS) XML.

Chapter 7 deals with MODS element sets. It delves deeply into the MODS elements, attributes and MODS XML records. Furthermore, the chapter lists some prominent digital library initiatives that are currently using MODS as the base metadata scheme. Mapping from the Dublin core to MODS is also examined.

Chapter 8 provides an outline of two versions (v. 3.0 and r. 4.0) of the Visual Resources Association Core Categories, a metadata scheme for the description of works of visual culture. Versions of the scheme are less discussed than Dublin Core and MODS, but the chapter provides a sound base and is useful for the readers who are interested in metadata creation for works of art and architecture – in other words, the museum sector.

The succeeding chapter focuses on set of interrelated themes such as interoperability, sharing of metadata among multiple collections within an institution and among different institutions, and among various external metadata services and repositories, metadata harvesting, aggregating, conversion and processing. The Open Archive Initiative protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAIPMH), needed to harvest metadata records from diverse repositories, is also demonstrated. The chapter investigates metadata mapping and crosswalks in greater depth. Mapping from a richer, hierarchical scheme (MODS) to simple Dublin Core is shown. In addition, seven metadata evaluation parameters, metadata quality assessment software tools such as Spotfire and Google Refine are explored. However, thorough and technical information regarding these software packages is not given.

Chapter 10 explains the various steps involved in designing a local metadata scheme as well as for digital collection projects. Several examples of screen captures from the CONTENTdm digital content management system software is illustrated through figures in a lucid way.

The last chapter discusses linked data, the semantic web and the Resource Description Framework (RDF). A brief introduction about metadata registries is also provided.

The book focuses on digital collections created by cultural heritage institutions, which include libraries, archives and museums. This practical manual is remarkably useful for professionals, library and information science students, curators and particularly those who are involved in the creation of metadata for cultural objects. Rather than surveying a large number of metadata schemes, the book offers a detailed look at three of the schemes most commonly used by cultural heritage institutions, namely Dublin Core, MODS and VRA core. The book is full of illustrations (all black and white), screen shots, and tables, which make it easy for readers to understand the concepts clearly. The images are of good quality. The explanations are lucid and the book is easy to read and free from jargon. A bibliography of 132 contributions at the end lists useful and important titles on different facets of metadata. An alphabetical index to the text is also provided, which enables the reader to locate the information in the document. Additional and more detailed conceptualization is provided by indicator digits “f” (for figures) and “t” (for tables), which enhances the retrieval of concepts from the text as per the choice of the reader. The book guides the reader, step by step through the concept and practicalities of creating and using metadata. A companion website (see www.neal‐schuman.com/metadata‐digital‐collections/) provides in depth questions and includes exercises for each chapter, with suggestions for instructors, along with additional practical and reference resources.

I recommend the book among the category of “must read”, especially in the present information set‐up, which has been blown by bit and byte technology. It will do wonders in the creation of a managed digital set up.