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Using a Dublin Core Application Profile for
Description and Teaching
Planning metadata
• Collaboration and responsibilities• Documentation• What is “good” metadata?
Planning metadata: collaboration and responsibilities“Metadata creation is an incremental process that should be a shared responsibility among various parts of an institution.”
A Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections
• Existing metadata?– Finding aids? Codicological description? Provenance?
• Subject specialists– Description
• Technicians– File format, extent, color management
• Administrators– Access rights
• Users?– Reviews, comments, tags
Planning metadata: documentation
• Documentation–Best practices–Local decisions, application profile– “Data dictionary”
• Plan for the future–Preservation and migration–Maintenance
Planning metadata: what is “good” metadata?
• Appropriate to objects in collection• Appropriate to users and use• Appropriate to system and resources• Use of standards • Interoperable and shareable
Good metadata: appropriate to objects
Format(s) & file type(s)– Images? Text? – JPEG, XML files, MP3, MPEG, PDF– More than one format in collection?
Images courtesy of Western Michigan University Libraries
Good metadata: appropriate to objects
• Genre(s)– Manuscripts? Maps? Cultural objects? Music?– More than one genre in collection?
• Subject matter
Images courtesy of ArtStor
Good metadata: appropriate to users
• Who are your primary users?– Medieval scholars? Undergraduate students?
• How will they expect to search?– Searching skills?
• What will they be looking for?• What “language” do they speak?– Community of practice? Vocabulary?
Communities of Practice & Metadata• Library community
– Mission: access, description, organization– Shared records using shared standards
• Museum community– Mission: outreach, education, interpretation– Records created primarily for internal use
• Archives community– Mission: archive, preservation– Collection-level records, finding aids
• Research and education community– Mission: research and collaboration– Shared records using a variety of standards
Good metadata: appropriate to intended use
• How do people use it now?
• Education or research?
• What are their expectations?
• What is their interest in the material?– Botany, hagiography, art, language, music?
• What are other ways it may be used in the future?
Image courtesy of Western Michigan University Libraries
How will it be used?
• Example of pre-printing press, handmade book
• Study of artwork, pigments, symbolism
• Study of paleography
• Study of the text – grammar, words & word usage
• Study of the text – people, places, subjects
• Comparison to other manuscripts – for textual variants, relationships between copies, identifying scribes or artists
Good metadata: appropriate to system & resources
• System– CONTENTdm– Luna Insight– DLXS– DSpace
• Resources– One-time grant money vs. budget line-item– Knowledge, skill, time of people– Availability of existing metadata
Metadata for images vs. text
• Image– Metadata is everything
• Text– Transcription and
markup
• Text as image– Image of the manuscript
page– Full-text in metadata
Image courtesy of ArtStor
Describing images
Ofness
Who? what? where? when?–People–Objects/activities–Places, times
Image courtesy of ArtStor
Describing images
Aboutness• What is the meaning of the work?
• What is expressed by the work?
• What do the objects, events, etc., depicted in the work symbolize?
• How may the image be interpreted?
• What was the intention of the work’s creator?
• How has the work been interpreted historically?
Image courtesy of ArtStor
Metadata Schema & standards selection
Schemas or Element sets
• Dublin Core
• VRA (Visual Resources Assoc. Core)
• TEI (Text Encoding Initiative)
• EAD (Encoded Archival Description)
• MARC (MAchine-Readable Cataloging)
Simple Dublin Core – Title
– Creator
– Subject
– Description
– Publisher
– Contributor
– Date
– Type
– Format
– Identifier
– Source
– Language
– Relation
– Coverage
– Rights
Expanded/Qualified Dublin Core
• Accrual Method
• Accrual Policy
• Accrual Periodicity
• Audience
• Instructional Method
• Provenance
• Rights Holder
• Description– Abstract
• Identifier– Bibliographic citation
• Relation– Is Part Of– Is Referenced By
• Title– Alternative title
What is an application profile? “There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ metadata schema” Tony Gill, et al.
• Draw elements from more than one set
• Tailor set of elements to serve your user requirements
• Document decisions, provide guidelines for use
Premodern Manuscript Application Profile
• Adds medieval manuscript description fields from ENRICH
• Can be used as teaching tool – http://
web.library.wmich.edu/DIGI/reference/PMAP_Data_DictionaryTOC.pdf
• Audience– Catalogers who are not medievalists– Researchers who are not technicians
• Easy to use with CMS like CONTENTdm– Will be included in 6.5 release
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PMAP Elements• Manuscript Identifier (R)• Title (R)• Incipit (O)• Author (M)• Origin Date (M)• Origin Location (M)• Description (R)• Provenance (M)• Manuscript Parts (O)• Explicit (O)• Secundo Folio (O)• Extent (O)• Subject (O)• Dimensions (O)• Material (O)• Collation (O)
• Foliation (O)• Binding (O)• Decoration Description (O)• Contributor (O)• Description of Hands (O)• Musical Notation (O)• Additions and Marginalia (O)• Relation-Is Part Of (RA)• Publisher (R)• Date-Issued (R)• Type (R)• Format (R)• Format-Extent (RA)• Identifier (R)• Relation-Is Referenced By (O)• Rights (RA)
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Required Elements
• Manuscript Identifier
• Title
• Description
• Publisher
• Date-Issued
• Type
• Format
• Identifier
Image courtesy of WMU
Mandatory if Available
• Author
• Origin Date
• Origin Location
• Provenance
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Recommended as Appropriate
• Relation-Is Part Of • Format-Extent • Rights
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Optional Elements• Incipit • Manuscript Parts • Explicit • Secundo Folio • Extent • Subject • Dimensions • Material • Collation
• Foliation• Binding • Decoration Description • Contributor • Description of Hands • Musical Notation • Additions and Marginalia • Relation-Is Referenced By
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Content, Carrier, Context• Content = text or work (author/title)
• Carrier = cultural/physical artifact
• Context = historical record (provenance)
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Content
• Title
• Author
• Incipit
• Explicit
• Language
• Subject
• Musical Notation
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Carrier
• Extent
• Dimensions
• Material
• Collation
• Foliation
• Secundo folio
• Description of hands
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Context
• Binding
• Provenance
• Origin Date
• Origin Location
• Relation-Is Part Of
• Relation-Is Referenced By
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Where can you find metadata?
• Catalog entries• Seller’s descriptions• Provenance– Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts http://
dla.library.upenn.edu/dla/schoenberg/index.html
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Controlled vocabularies
• Library of Congress Authorities
• Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT)
• Union List of Artist Names (ULAN)
• ICONCLASS
• Library of Congress Thesaurus for Graphic Materials (TGM)
• DCMI Type Vocabulary
Why use controlled vocabularies? “Do it once, do it right (consistent schemas, controlled vocabularies), and you can
re-purpose metadata in a wide variety of ways.” Murtha Baca
• Improve search retrieval– Precision – how many retrieved records are relevant?
– Recall – how many relevant records retrieved?
• Database organization– Allow for preset searches, lists of categories
• Name disambiguation– People, places, organizations
Differences in vocabularies-meaning"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.“ –
The Princess Bride
• Initials – RBMS– Provenance
evidence
• Initials – AAT, TGM & LCSH– Layout feature
Image courtesy of Artstor
Differences in vocabularies-specificity
• TGM– Initials
• LCSH and AAT– Historiated initials
• AAT– Factotum initials– Figure initials– Historiated initials– Inhabited initials
Differences in vocabularies-Interoperability
ULAN: Buonarroti, Michelangelo (Italian sculptor, painter, and architect, 1475-1564)
LCNAF: Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1475-1564
AAT: IlluminationsLCSH: Illumination of books and
manuscripts
Content standards & Best Practices
• Descriptive Cataloging of Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, and Early Modern Manuscripts (AMREMM)
• Cataloging Cultural Objects (CCO)
• Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Books
• CDP Dublin Core Metadata Best Practices
• TEI Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange
• Best Practices for CONTENTdm and Other OAI PMH ‐Compliant Repositories: Creating Sharable Metadata, Version 3.0
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Why are standards important?• Interoperability
– “The goal of interoperability is to help users find and access information objects that are distributed across domains and institutions.” NISO
• Agreed upon terminology– antiphoner, antiphonal, antiphonies, antiphonary
• Easier to share data– OAI harvesting– Digital Scriptorium– Medieval Electronic Scholarly Alliance– Semantic Web/Linked Data
Linked Data – Tim Berners Lee (2006)
• Use URIs as names for things
• Use HTTP URIs so that people can look up those names.
• When someone looks up a URI, provide useful information
• Include links to other URIs so that they can discover more things.
Planning for the Semantic Web
40http://lod-cloud.net/versions/2011-09-19/lod-cloud.html
RDF triples
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Subject ObjectPredicate
RDF triples
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manuscript Antiphonarieshas subject
Planning for the future: Use standard vocabularies
“In order to make it easier for applications to understand Linked Data, data providers should use terms from widely deployed vocabularies to represent data wherever possible.” Tom Heath and Christian Bizer (2011) Linked Data: Evolving the Web
into a Global Data Space
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Record for digital object• Title: Hymnal for the
Sanctoral Cycle and Common of Saints, f. 150 r.
• Origin Location: Abbazia di Morimondo
• Contributor: Reoldus, Bertramus, 13th century-14th century (scribe)
• Subject: Antiphonaries
Linked data: breaking record into data
Reoldus, Bertramus, 13th century-14th century
Antiphonaries
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has contributor
has subject
has location
Abbazia di Morimondo
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http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85005734
(Antiphonaries)
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/no2013029609
(Reoldus, Bertramus, 13th century-14th century)
http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/subject
http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/
contributor
Linked data: Unambiguous identifiers
http://luna.library.wmich.edu:8180/luna/servlet/s/td1586
(has contributor)
(has subject)
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/nr93035920
(Abbazia di Morimondo)
http://www.geonames.org/maps/google_45.352_8.955.html 49
What are the possibilities?
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Questions?
Sheila Bair, Metadata & Cataloging Librarian
Susan Steuer, Head of Special [email protected] Western Michigan University Libraries
Image courtesy of WMU Libraries
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