Library objectives and practice

Metadata use

Metadata records facilitate effective resource discovery in the library and other information communities. Meta tags based on internationally recognised standards provide for consistent description and tagging of content and effective search and retrieval of information resources. Internal search engines eg library catalogue can be configured to search specific metadata elements for optimum search and retrieval. Your search query can and should result in only relevant resources being retrieved in your results list.

Metadata records also allow for sharing of descriptions across information communities. Metadata can be harvested from distributed repositories and then made available through global search services regardless of hardware and software platforms, data structures and interfaces.

Metadata enables information resources to be exposed and accessible to users globally, to facilitate increasing use of these resources as well as an improved awareness of available resources.

Metadata enables better management and maintenance of collections over time. Library management systems eg library catalogue, and, content management systems eg Interwoven's Teamsite automatically create some metadata eg author, date, as part of a workflow system.

Information about the resource assists with identifying components of the content that can be re-purposed or re-used in a variety of contexts.

Metadata standards

Interoperable standards are important for high quality, consistent metadata records that can be produced locally and shared globally across multiple systems.

There are many types of metadata formats / schema being developed. The type of metadata to use depends on the purpose and function of the metadata eg resource discovery, digital preservation, administrative, re-use, etc.

Standards can be simple or complex. Simple standards allow for non-specialists to create simple and consistent descriptive records for information resources easily and inexpensively. Complex standards which are richer are costly to implement and are usually domain specific, but highly effective.

In the library, richer schemes such as eg AACR / MARC21 standard are used in the library catalogue for searching and retrieving bibliographic information. Library websites use Dublin Core and AGLS metadata. See MARC 21 Metadata for free web resources in the library catalogue project on the Library projects page.

The ARROW project will support multiple metadata formats for a wide range of content types to describe research content contained in institutional repositories. See ARROW project on the University projects page.

Educational metadata application profiles

Application profiles are suited to specific communities of practice eg education and there are a growing number of these in the education sector. See Application profiles on Metadata standards page. More flexible metadata strategies are emerging for metadata management. See ARROW project on the University projects page.

Common approach to metadata in higher education

The library supports a common approach to access, search, use, sharing of / trading in and management of digital objects in the higher education sector. The ARROW project is seen as an opportunity for collaboration in the higher education sector. It has the potential to expose digital objects stored in institutional repositories for sharing across collections globally.

See the IDEA Summer 2005 - Metadata Infrastructure Workshop - Meeting Report (pdf, 121kb) for more details of metadata implementations within the Australian education and training sectors.

Metadata creation

Human metadata generation is still the most reliable way of creating good quality metadata. Research authors in collaboration with metadata experts (library cataloguers and indexers) can create good quality trusted metadata. Authors as creators of web resource intellectual content have valuable knowledge for cataloguing. Metadata experts have special knowledge and skills in cataloguing and indexing principles and practices. Establishing partnerships between persons / institutions involved in metadata creation is highly recommended for increasing the amount of metadata and the quality of the metadata for web content.

Trialing semi-automatic and automatic metadata generation in library and university metadata projects is supported.

More detail, see Metadata creation.

Subject vocabularies

The library recommends keywords or key phrases (natural language approach) in combination with the use of subject-based controlled vocabularies.

The library recommends using an existing vocabulary. In the educational domain, multiple thesauri should be supported. Different collections require different thesauri. Library of Congress Subject headings is used for e-resources eg e-journals, e-books, databases etc searchable via the library catalogue. RFCD, one of the classification schemes of the ABS Australian Standard Research Classification is more suited to research materials while the Australian Standard Classification of Education (ASCED) or the Australian Education Thesaurus may be more suitable for tagging learning objects. However there must be systems / tools that can support multiple thesauri and search engines which can index content tagged using different thesauri and searching by a single search.

DCMI has implemented a metadata registry of controlled vocabularies for Subject, Type and Format.

More detail, see Metadata vocabularies.

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