Using Metadata in CONTENTdm

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Using Metadata in CONTENTdm

• Diana Brooking and Allen Maberry
• Metadata Implementation Group, Univ. of
  Washington
• Crossing Organizational Boundaries
• Oct. 29, 2002

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Outline

• The metadata environment factors that
  influence basic decisions
• Structure of metadata Dublin Core, field
  structure in CONTENTdm
• Content standards what goes into the fields,
  formatting, controlled vocabularies
• The data dictionary bringing it all together

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Metadata what is it?

• Data about data
• Metadata are data that describe the attributes
  of a resource characterize its relationships
  support its discovery, management, and effective
  use and exist in an electronic environment.
  (Sherry Vellucci, LRTS 44 (1), 1999)
• Commonly known as cataloging

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Metadata how is it used?

• For description information for display with the
  image
• For searching users search for images by
  searching for text attached to the image

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Basic Decisions Description

• How much information do you have?
• How much information do your users need/want?
• What is depicted in the image?
• Who created it?
• Why is it important? Why did you select it?
• How much detail do you need to go into?

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Basic Decisions Searching

• How will users find the images? What will they be
  looking for? What aspects are they interested in?
• How will you find the images? What are your
  staffs needs?
• At what level do you need to distinguish images
  from one another?
• At what level do you need to bring like resources
  together?

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Decision Factors

• Size of file
• 50 images (small enough to browse)
• 10,000 images (need for more precise searching)
• 10,000 images of many different things vs. 10,000
  images of trains

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Decision Factors

• Audience
• General public vs. specialists (e.g., railroad
  enthusiasts)
• Institutional mission
• Say you are a railroad museum (audience
  expectations)

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Decision Factors

• Legacy data
• Starting from scratch
• Years of good cataloging
• Years of inconsistent cataloging
• Software issues
• What kind of data can the system handle?
• What are its search capabilities
• Short-term vs. long-term view

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Basic Dublin Core Metadata

• What is the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set
  (DCMES)
• Why was it developed, and how has it been
  developed.
• A short history of the DC Initiative is available
  at http//www.dublincore.org/about/overview/

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Dublin Core Metadata Element Set

• There are15 basic elements
• See Dublin Core Element Set, Version 1.1 -
  Reference Description
• But, it is adaptable and expandable to fit the
  needs of different users by the use of
  Applications profiles

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Dublin Core and CONTENTdm

• CONTENTdm is designed around the Dublin Core
• (Very) basic overview of how CONTENTdm works
• CONTENTdm uses DC element names as file names
• Because each database has constant file names it
  is easy to combine them to search either one or
  more collections

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Dublin Core mapping

• An example
• Collection A has a field Photographer mapped to
  DCCreator, and Collection B has a field Artist
  mapped to DCCreator. Searching across both
  databases searches the CONTENTdm index Creat
  and retrieves data from the index for both
  Photographers and Artists for collections A
  B or ABn

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Dublin Core and searching

• What are the practical consequences of this?
• In cross database searching, one can search on
  specific fields. However, the names of these
  fields will not be Photographer or Artist, but
  Creator because that is the common name of the
  index in each collection.
• However you can do a keyword search on all
  searchable fields in the database whether they
  are mapped to a Dublin Core field or not.

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• Modern Book Arts field labels
• bibliographic description descr0
• text production descr1
• image production descr2, etc.
• Cross-database search index
• Description descr

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Dublin Core tips

• It is important to make sure that you are careful
  about what information you put in searchable
  fields, even if they are not mapped to a DC
  element.
• If you have multiple collections it is very
  important to make sure that the same type of data
  is mapped to the same DC elements consistently

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Content Standards

• Used for choosing and formatting the data that
  goes into the fields.
• Increase coherence and intelligibility of
  description
• Enhance reliability of retrieval
• Enable compatibility with other collections
  (cross-database searching)
• Makes maintenance and possible migration of data
  to other software easier

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Standards Consistency

• Date field dates should always be formatted
  the same way
• Photographer field same persons name should
  always appear in the same form
• Subject field same topic should have the same
  term used to describe it across images
• If different terms or formats are used, the user
  may not even realize that more than one search is
  necessary

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Examples of Content Standards

• For description
• Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, 2nd ed., 2002
  revision (libraries)
• Graphic Materials Rules for Describing Original
  Items and Historical Collections, 1982 revisions
  available electronically (libraries, also
  museums, historical societies, LC Prints
  Photo., CORBIS)

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Content Standards Controlled Vocabularies

• Any subset of the lexicon of a natural
  language. A list of preferred and nonpreferred
  terms produced by the process of vocabulary
  control. Types of controlled vocabularies include
  subject heading lists and thesauri. (NISO)

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Controlled vocabs for which fields?

• When you need consistency across images, user
  searches to find all
• Proper names for things (people, places, etc.)
• Subjects depicted in the images
• Not necessary when you have
• Fields that contain data more likely to be unique
  to the particular image (title, notes, other free
  text fields)

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Remember

• You can have fields that dont use controlled
  vocabularies, but where you still need
  consistency in format
• Dates
• Image numbers
• Physical description
• You could create your own controlled vocab lists
  (if you really had to)

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Controlled Vocabularies

• For names
• Library of Congress/National Authority File
  http//authorities.loc.gov
• Union List of Artist Names (Getty)
  http//www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabulary/ula
  n
• USGS Geographic Names Information System
  http//geonames.usgs.gov/gnishome.html

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Controlled Vocabularies

• For subjects
• Library of Congress Subject Headings
  http//authorities.loc.gov
• LC Thesaurus for Graphic Materials
  http//www.loc.gov/rr/print/tgm1
• Art Architecture Thesaurus (Getty)
  http//www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabulary/aat
  
• Chenhalls Nomenclature (The Revised Nomenclature
  for Museum Cataloging. Walnut Creek Altamira
  Press, 1995)

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Vocabulary conflicts?

• DC Subject LCSH vs. AAT
• Church buildings vs. Churches
• DC Coverage LC vs. Board of Geographic Names
• Moscow vs. Moskva
• Challenge of meeting needs of diverse collections
  and users, while maintaining consistency within
  and between databases

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Data Dictionaries

• For each project a data dictionary documents
• Database-specific field labels
• Mapping of fields to DC elements
• Data formatting instructions for each field
• Recommended controlled vocabularies
• UW data dictionaries http//www.lib.washington.ed
  u/msd/mig/datadicts/default.html
• MOHAI