This study presents the current state of research and practice on metadata quality through focus on the functional perspective on metadata quality, measurement, and evaluation criteria coupled with mechanisms for improving metadata quality. Quality metadata reflect the degree to which the metadata in question perform the core bibliographic functions of discovery, use, provenance, currency, authentication, and administration. The functional perspective is closely tied to the criteria and measurements used for assessing metadata quality. Accuracy, completeness, and consistency are the most common criteria used in measuring metadata quality in the literature. Guidelines embedded within a Web form or template perform a valuable function in improving the quality of the metadata. Results of the study indicate a pressing need for the building of a common data model that is interoperable across digital repositories.

Metadata Quality in Digital Repositories: A Survey of the Current State of the Art

Open educational resources repositories literature review - Towards a comprehensive quality approaches framework

Purpose – This paper seeks to describe and discuss a tagging experiment involving images related to Israeli and Jewish cultural heritage. The aim of this experiment was to compare freely assigned tags with values (free text) assigned to predefined metadata elements.Design/methodology/approach – Two groups of participants were asked to provide tags for 12 images. The first group of participants was asked to assign descriptive tags to the images without guidance (unstructured tagging), while the second group was asked to provide free‐text values to predefined metadata elements (structured tagging).Findings – The results show that on the one hand structured tagging provides guidance to the users, but on the other hand different interpretations of the meaning of the elements may worsen the tagging quality instead of improving it. In addition, unstructured tagging allows for a wider range of tags.Research limitations/implications – The recommendation is to experiment with a system where the users provide both ...

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Structured versus unstructured tagging: a case study

This study explores the current state of metadata-creation practices across digital repositories and collections by using data collected from a nationwide survey of mostly cataloging and metadata professionals. Results show that MARC, AACR2, and LCSH are the most widely used metadata schema, content standard, and subjectcontrolled vocabulary, respectively. Dublin Core (DC) is the second most widely used metadata schema, followed by EAD, MODS, VRA, and TEI. Qualified DC’s wider use vis-a-vis Unqualified DC (40.6 percent versus 25.4 percent) is noteworthy. The leading criteria in selecting metadata and controlled-vocabulary schemata are collection-specific considerations, such as the types of resources, nature of the collection, and needs of primary users and communities. Existing technological infrastructure and staff expertise also are significant factors contributing to the current use of metadata schemata and controlled vocabularies for subject access across distributed digital repositories and collections. Metadata interoperability remains a major challenge. There is a lack of exposure of locally created metadata and metadata guidelines beyond the local environments. Homegrown locally added metadata elements may also hinder metadata interoperability across digital repositories and collections when there is a lack of sharable mechanisms for locally defined extensions and variants.

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Metadata Creation Practices in Digital Repositories and Collections: Schemata, Selection Criteria, and Interoperability

This article evaluates practices on metadata quality control in digital repositories and collections using an online survey of cataloging and metadata professionals in the United States. The study examines (1) the perceived importance of metadata quality, (2) metadata quality evaluation criteria and issues, and (3) mechanisms for building quality assurance into the metadata creation process. The survey finds wide recognition of the essential role of metadata quality assurance. Accuracy and consistency are prioritized as the main criteria for metadata quality evaluation. Metadata semantics greatly affects consistent and accurate metadata application. Strong awareness of metadata quality correlates with the widespread adoption of various quality control mechanisms, such as staff training, manual review, metadata guidelines, and metadata generation tools. And yet, metadata guidelines are used less frequently as a quality assurance mechanism in digital collections involving multiple institutions.

Metadata Quality Control in Digital Repositories and Collections: Criteria, Semantics, and Mechanisms

This paper is a current assessment of the status of metadata creation and mapping between cataloger-defined field names and Dublin Core (DC) metadata elements across three digital image collections. The metadata elements that evince the most frequently inaccurate, inconsistent and incomplete DC metadata application are identified. As well, the most frequently occurring locally added metadata elements and associated pattern development are examined. For this, a randomly collected sample of 659 metadata item records from three digital image collections is analyzed. Implications and issues drawn from the evaluation of the current status of metadata creation and mapping are also discussed in relation to the issue of semantic interoperability of concept representation across digital image collections. The findings of the study suggest that conceptual ambiguities and semantic overlaps inherent among some DC metadata elements hinder semantic interoperability. The DC metadata scheme needs to be refined in order to disambiguate semantic relations of certain DC metadata elements that present semantic overlaps and conceptual ambiguities between element names and their corresponding definitions. The findings of the study also suggest that the development of mediation mechanisms such as concept networks that facilitate the metadata creation and mapping process are critically needed for enhancing metadata quality.

Tung-Ran Park

Papers

Semantic interoperability and metadata quality : An analysis of metadata item records of digital image collections