Makeover Your Metadata for Maximum Interoperability

I Bet You Clean Up

Real Nice

Heather GilbertDigital Scholarship Librarian, College of Charleston

SCLA/SELA Joint Conference, Greenville, SC November 13, 2013

South Carolina Digital Library

• SCDL Aggregates Content from Across the State

• Over 50 Partner Institutions• 3 Major Regions: Coastal, Midlands &

Upstate• 200,000 items• Provides Metadata Templates,

Documentation, Digitization Standards and Best Practices

SCDL & the DPLA

• Asked to be One of the First 6 DPLA Service Hubs

• DPLA Required Legacy Metadata Correction

• 200,000 Items Across Three Major Regions and a Variety of Platforms

= A Lot of Potential for Correction

Our Messy Metadata

• The Importance of Controlled Vocabularies– Format (Internet Media Type) = MIME

Type– Media Type, Type = Local CV & DCMI

Type– Subject & SC County = LOC please!

• Standardize Your Formats– Date Fields = ISO 8601 This means no circa dates

Why Clean It Up?

• Polished Metadata:– Increased

Interoperability– Facets Nicely =

Browses Better– Higher Results

Accuracy– Relevant Nationally

• DPLA Compliant

Open Refine Your Data

http://openrefine.org/Free, web-based, open source application for cleaning up, transforming and using APIs to extend your data

Documentation AplentyUsing Open Refine (Verborgh, De Wilde)http://openrefine.org/documentation.htmlhttps://github.com/OpenRefine/OpenRefine/wiki

Open Refine - Create

Open Refine - Create

Open Refine - Edit

Open Refine - Edit

Open Refine - Edit

Open Refine - Edit

Open Refine - Export

@LCDigitalLib @Itsalikelystory gilberthj@cofc.edu

lcdl.library.cofc.edu scmemory.org

Thank You!

Heather GilbertDigital Scholarship Librarian, College of CharlestonProject Coordinator, Lowcountry Digital Library