A presentation to accompany a workshop I ran on behalf of UKOLN - http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ - , University of Bath, at the Repositories Support Project Winter School in 2009 - http://www.rsp.ac.uk/. The workshop was designed to give repository managers an introduction to metadata as it related to their work.

1. Metadata - what works, what
doesn’t?
Stephanie Taylor
UKOLN, University of Bath
E - s.taylor@ukoln.ac.uk
UKOLN is supported by:
This work is licensed under a Attribution-
NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 licence
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2. About Me
Stephanie Taylor:
• Work with UKOLN as a research officer
• Work on the practical side of institutional
repositories
• Worked on the first phase of the RSP
UKOLN:
• National centre of expertise in digital
information management
• Located at the University of Bath
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3. What Is Metadata?
Metadata is structured information
that describes, explains, locates,
or otherwise makes it easier to
retrieve, use, or manage an
information resource.
Source: NISO (2004) Understanding Metadata. Bethesda, NISO
Press.
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4. Metadata is…
Structured data about “something”
• Text
• Images
• Sound
• Movement
• Objects
• Events
• Services
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5. Metadata is…
Encountered every day
• Timetables
• Directories
• Internet shopping sites, etc
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6. Metadata is…
Stored in -
• Databases, repositories
• Web pages
Carriers
• Formats (e.g. MARC)
• Markup languages (e.g. HTML, SGML,
XML)
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7. Types of metadata
Descriptive
Structural
Administrative
• Rights management metadata
• Preservation metadata
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8. Why do you need it?
•To enable discovery of your digitised material
• To enable harvesting of your digitised
material by external systems
• To help you organise your digitised material
• To support archiving and preservation
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9. Metadata Schemas
A metadata scheme is a sets of metadata
elements designed for a specific purpose,
such as describing a particular type of
information resource.
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10. Current Standards
“Standards are like toothbrushes, everyone
agrees that they’re a good idea but nobody
wants to use anyone else’s.” From a Murtha
Baca presentation
Dublin Core
(Simple, Qualified, Application Profiles)
MARC, ONIX
EAD
MODS, METS, DIDL, PREMIS, MIX, RSLP-
CD etc.
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11. Out of the box…
Realistically most people when first
establishing online digitised resource will work
with what comes out of the box … but fields
can be added and schemes customised.
 Explore types and field structures at an early
stage and set up your metadata scheme.
 Consider local needs such as departmental
and project work structures and any local
decisions needed about subject fields etc.
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12. The “Other” Repositories
What *might* be a repository?
• Flickr?
• Google Docs?
• YouTube?
• SlideShare?
• Wikipedia?
• Twitter?
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13. Folksonomy & Tagging
Metadata for the people, by the peopl
• Keywords
• Descriptive
• Created by and for human beings
• Inconsistent
• Personal
• Shared
• Created on the fly
• Unstructured
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