Bespoke metadata creation tools are commonplace
RLG Programs has conducted a survey of partner institutions which have “multiple metadata creation centers” to:
…gain a baseline understanding of current descriptive metadata practices and dependencies, the first project in our program to change metadata creation processes.
Some intriguing statements in this summary post (I look forward to getting hold of the report when it’s completed). For example:
76 listed the tools they used to create metadata. Guess how many tools were named? Over 270 in total, 88 different ones. And the most common? A custom system. Besides an integrated library system, the tool most frequently cited was MS Access. In several cases, a single institution used more than a dozen different tools.
In the complex world of metadata standards, it is perhaps not surprising that the range of tools used to author metadata is broad. Is this a permanent state of affairs? I wonder if this says anything about the maturity of this space - or is this just the nature of this particular beast?
Read more at hangingtogether.org
Technorati Tags: metadata, metadata tools, hangingtogether.org, RLG
September 21st, 2007 at 7:59 am
Hi Paul - this is very interesting and not surprising at all. It offers another reason why the metadata being shared over oai-pmh is so diverse - it’s not just the fault of simple DC! With the SWORD project we’ve been looking at standardising the point of deposit and have kept away from the murky area of metadata, but perhaps there’s work needed to support common interfaces for the pre-deposit metadata creation stage too.