TY - JOUR
T1 - Evaluating descriptive richness in Collection-Level Metadata
AU - Zavalina, Oksana L.
AU - Palmer, Carole L.
AU - Jackson, Amy S.
AU - Han, Myung Ja
PY - 2009
Y1 - 2009
N2 - When many collections are brought together in a federation or aggregation, the attributes of the original collections can become difficult to discern. Collection-level metadata has the potential to provide important context about the purpose and features of individual collections, but the qualitative aspects of collections are difficult to describe in a systematic way. This article reports on a content analysis of collection records in the Digital Collections and Content (DCC) aggregation, conducted to analyze the kinds of substantive and purposeful information represented across 202 cultural heritage collections. We found that the free-text Description field often provides more accurate and complete representation of subjects and object types than the specified fields; it consistently represents properties such as uniqueness, importance, comprehensiveness, provenance, and creator of items in digital collection, and other vital contextual information about the intentions of collectors and the value of collections for scholarly users. The results show that free-text collection metadata can be both concise and semantically rich, and can provide a valuable source of data for enhancing and customizing controlled vocabularies.
AB - When many collections are brought together in a federation or aggregation, the attributes of the original collections can become difficult to discern. Collection-level metadata has the potential to provide important context about the purpose and features of individual collections, but the qualitative aspects of collections are difficult to describe in a systematic way. This article reports on a content analysis of collection records in the Digital Collections and Content (DCC) aggregation, conducted to analyze the kinds of substantive and purposeful information represented across 202 cultural heritage collections. We found that the free-text Description field often provides more accurate and complete representation of subjects and object types than the specified fields; it consistently represents properties such as uniqueness, importance, comprehensiveness, provenance, and creator of items in digital collection, and other vital contextual information about the intentions of collectors and the value of collections for scholarly users. The results show that free-text collection metadata can be both concise and semantically rich, and can provide a valuable source of data for enhancing and customizing controlled vocabularies.
KW - Descriptive metadata
KW - Federated digital collections
KW - Metadata aggregation
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=79951864060&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=79951864060&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/19386380802627109
DO - 10.1080/19386380802627109
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:79951864060
SN - 1938-6389
VL - 8
SP - 263
EP - 292
JO - Journal of Library Metadata
JF - Journal of Library Metadata
IS - 4
ER -