Meta Data Services

About: Meta Data Services is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2564 publications have been published within this topic receiving 40102 citations.

Introduction to Metadata

Abstract: " Metadata" has existed for years but is still not clearly understood and often unused. But given technical communication's direction, metadata's importance is growing. Metadata is easy to define. (The complexity lies in the details and implementation.) The simplest type of metadata is the once common pull-out card drawers in libraries. Need a call number for the novel Ringworld? Pull out the R title card drawer, find "Ringworld", and note its number. Can't remember the book's name but you know Larry Niven wrote it... Pull out the N author card drawer, find "Niven, Larry", and note the number. The cards, now replaced by online versions, contain information - book name, author name, etc. - that help us find information - in this case, a book. That's the gist of metadata - information that helps us find, process, or manage other information. This paper summarizes metadata. The conference presentation will go into more detail.

Systems and methods for distributed content storage and management

Abstract: Systems, methods and computer program products for distributed content storage and management are provided. The distributed content storage and management system includes an indexed archive system; information source agents, information source clients; and a network to couple the information source clients to the indexed archive system. In an alternate embodiment, a legacy back-up system is also used. The index archive system includes an information entryway for gathering file information, a triage engine, an indexing engine, a metadata engine, and a content engine. These engines generate content indexes, metadata and metadata indexes from received files and store them along with the file content into a set of repositories, including an indexing repository, a metadata repository and a content repository. Methods are provided for the efficient retrieval and indexing of files, and for the storage of files, file content, content indexes, metadata and metadata indexes.

Metadata standards for educational resources

Abstract: In the 1990s, recognition of the potential economies of reusing educational materials spawned the development of metadata standards for sharing and storing learning objects. Metadata is data that describes a physical or electronic resource and can be used to manage collections of documents, images, and other information in a repository such as an archive or museum. Some metadata elements, such as title, description, subject, and keywords, are similar to those that libraries use to catalog their holdings. Other elements, such as the uniform resource identifier (URI), are specific to a digital, Web-based environment. Metadata can be stored in a digital library or repository that provides services to search or browse for educational materials. The Dublin Core Metadata Element Set and IEEE Learning Object Metadata are two popular metadata standards that facilitate cataloging, searching, and reuse of such resources.

A Metadata Best Practice for a Scientific Data Repository

Abstract: Digital data repositories ought to support immediate operational needs and long-term project goals. This paper presents the Dryad repository's metadata best practice balancing of these two needs. The paper reviews background work exploring the meaning of science, characterizing data, and highlighting data curation metadata challenges. The Dryad repository is introduced, and the initiative's metadata best practice and underlying rationales are described. Dryad's metadata approach includes two prongs: one addressing the long-term goal to align with the Semantic Web via a metadata application profile; and another addressing the immediate need to make content available in DSpace via an extensible markup language (XML) schema. The conclusion summarizes limitations and advantages of the two prongs underlying Dryad's metadata effort.

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

Abstract: 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.