# Presentation: 509462

##  1. Introduction to Digital Libraries and Metadata

- Metadata Standards and Applications Workshop

## Goals of Session

- Understand similarities and differences between traditional and digital libraries focusing on metadata
- Explore different types and functions of metadata (descriptive,
- 	administrative, structural, etc.)

## Traditional vs. Digital Libraries

- Traditional library characteristics
- Digital library characteristics?

**Notes:**
We are all quite familiar with the traditional library; brick and mortar (buildings) with books and information items of various formats. 
 But, what are our thoughts concerning digital libraries or as some may say “electronic libraries”  or  “virtual libraries?

## What is a digital library?

- a library in which collections are stored in digital formats and accessed by computers. The digital content may be stored locally, or accessed remotely via computer networks.
- a type of information retrieval system.

**Notes:**
Definition from wikipedia
Does that sound about right to you?
It sounds OK, but...

## Digital Library Federation (DLF)

- "Digital libraries are organizations that provide the resources, including the specialized staff, to select, structure, offer intellectual access to, interpret, distribute, preserve the integrity of, and ensure the persistence over time of collections of digital works so that they are readily and economically available for use by a defined community or set of communities.“
- _[http://www.diglib.org/](http://www.diglib.org/)_

**Notes:**
We think a better definition could be...[as read above]
This is DLF’s “working” definition of a digital library.
DLF continues to state : that “ the concept of digital library has multiple senses that one might invoke in various contexts. For example, the concept may refer simply to the notion of collection without reference to organization, intellectual accessibility or service attributes. This extended sense seems to be in play, for example, when we hear the World Wide Web described as a digital library. The concept might also refer to the organization underlying the collection, or even more specifically to the computer-based system in which the collection resides.”

DLF is a consortium of libraries and related agencies that are pioneering the use of electronic information technologies to extend collections and services.
The digital library is not a single entity; 
The digital library requires technology to link the resources of many
 * The linkages between the many digital libraries and information services are transparent to the end users;
Universal access to digital libraries and information services is a goal; 
* Digital library collections are not limited to document surrogates: they extend to digital artifacts that cannot be represented or distributed in printed formats 

## Slide 6

**Notes:**
Wikipedia even claims that Project Gutenberg is the first digital library, established in 1971?
What do you think?

## http://www.worlddigitallibrary.org/project/english/index.html

- _[http://www.worlddigitallibrary.org/project/english/index.html](http://www.worlddigitallibrary.org/project/english/index.html)_

**Notes:**
We are now in the process of developing the World Digital Library.
Google donated $3 million to LC to develop the specifications for a WDL.
This is just the homepage for the WDL prototype. To learn more about WDL the URL is provided.
The point is, we are now very much in a digital environment.

- How does the environment affect the creation of metadata?

**Notes:**
Cultural heritage institutions, not just libraries...

## Traditional Libraries

- Firm commitment to standards
- Specifications for metadata content (e.g., AACR2)
- Specifications for metadata encoding (e.g., MARC)
- A variety of syntactical bindings available
- Agreements on quality expectations
- Tradition of sharing, facilitated by bibliographic utilities
- Available documentation and training

**Notes:**
Characteristics of commitment to principles of bibliographic control:
Sense of quality
Measure of completeness for a bibliographic record
Documentation is ubiquitous– well-established body of knowledge (we pride ourselves on having a good handle on the documentation)

## Digital Libraries

- No dominant content standard
- A variety of “formats” (or “schemas” or “element sets”)
- Some emerging “federated” agreements, mostly in the world of digital libraries attached to traditional libraries
- Variable quality expectations
- Emerging basis for sharing (OAI-PMH)
- Some documentation and training is becoming available

**Notes:**
[her notes do not fit] 
There’s a question of what is a digital library? Since it’s not physical, and most of our definition above defines it by what it’s not?
Does it revolve around information services, or the web platform?
“Data is the next ‘Intel inside””—Tim O’Reilly
There is a lot of locally-invented “stuff” involved in many digital libraries, but increasingly standards are being developed.
[Note reference here to OAI-PMH; we’ll talk more about that tomorrow]

## Environmental Factors

- Differences:
*Players*: New world of metadata not necessarily led by librarians
*Goals*: Competition for users critical for sustainability
*Resources*: No real basis for understanding non-technical needs (including metadata creation and maintenance)
- Many levels of content responsibility (or none)

**Notes:**
[explain resources!]
People from libraries are trying to talk their way in [to the digital library world]
One thing that creates competition is scale.  Compared to published materials, the scale of digital stuff to manage is staggering.  As a result, the digital library world is trying to manage with as little human intervention as possible.  We want to facilitate people getting at their stuff without increasing the cost.  We should not compare this to what we traditionally do.
“In the future, the people that are now known as ‘catalogers’ will become ‘ontology midwives.’” – John Unsworth (Dean, GSLIS, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
The skill set is the same, the management of the information is not

## Environmental Factors

- Similarities
- It’s about discovery (and access, and use and meeting user needs)
- Pressure for fast, cheap and “good enough” (also rich, scalable, and re-usable--is that a contradiction?)
- Wide variety of materials and services
- Maintenance needs often overlooked

**Notes:**
We’re still trying to find stuff, for example, using identifiers such as ISBD, ISSN.
There is pressure to do more with less
A lot of things are funded by grants.  There is grant support for getting things out there, but not for continued support.

## What IS Metadata?

- Some possibilities:
- Data about data (or data about resources)
- A management tool
- Computer-processible, human-interpretable information about digital and non-digital objects

**Notes:**
cataloging is a subset of metadata.  Metadata goes beyond the bibliographic record.

Favorite definition of metadata: “Metadata is the new word that men use for cataloging”

[Talk more about it being a management tool...]

**“****In moving from dispersed digital collections to interoperable digital libraries, the most important activity we need to focus on is standards... most important is the wide variety of metadata standards [including] descriptive metadata... administrative metadata..., structural metadata, and terms and conditions metadata...”**
- Howard Besser, NYU

## Metadata standards in digital libraries

- Interoperability and object exchange requires the use of established standards
- Many digital objects are complex and are comprised of multiple files
- XML is the de-facto standard for metadata descriptions on the Internet
- Complex digital objects require many more forms of metadata than analog for their management and use
- Descriptive
- Administrative
- Technical
- Digital provenance/events
- Rights/Terms and conditions
- Structural

## Types of metadata 

- Descriptive
- Administrative
- Technical
- Digital provenance
- Rights/Access
- Preservation
- Structural
- Meta-metadata
- Other?

## Descriptive Metadata

- Title, author, human-readable description of a resource
- Subject or topical information
- Genre and format of the resource
- Relationships with other resources (version, parent/child, etc.)

**Notes:**
This is the metadata we all know and love

## Administrative Metadata

- Metadata to manage the object
- Technical metadata: technical characteristics about the object
- Digital provenance metadata: actions that have been performed on the object
- Rights metadata: information about access and use of the object

**Notes:**
“pm: All of the above”

## Rights/Access Metadata

- Where is the resource? Is it in a place open to me?
- Are there restrictions on the use of the resource?
- What can I do with this resource?

**Notes:**
In the web environment, “who has rights” is important.
We also record after-the-fact metadata:  who has used it?
Libraries have an opportunity to share the use of our metadata with such “who has used this” metadata.  This (i.e. “use” metadata) is controversial.

## Preservation Metadata

- Designed to ensure that the information the resource contains remains accessible to users over a long period of time
- Records details about format migration and data refreshment
- Tracks versions used for different kinds of access and display
- Allows a variety of approaches to the problem of maintaining resources over time

**Notes:**
Preservation metadata supports digital objects over a long period of time.  Is the object today still the same that was loaded into the system a while ago?
PREMIS the new preservation metadata standard and it will be covered in a later session.

## Structural Metadata

- No single standard or best practice governs structural metadata creation
- Ties the components of a complex or compound resource together and makes the whole usable
- Enables flexible and local approaches to presentation and navigation
- Various approaches to sharing structural metadata exist (METS perhaps the best known)

**Notes:**
There are not many standards about structural metadata.  When you have an object online, you need help relating a group of objects, for example a book with pages, or a serial with pieces/issues.  In METS (which we will touch on in session 4), structure is an important piece of the metadata file.

## Meta-metadata

- Metadata about the metadata
- Who created this information?
- When was it created?
- When were links last checked?
- Other update transactions?
- May be a component of some metadata schemes

## Functions of Metadata

**Notes:**
Here are some examples of metadata from a functional point of view.

Different metadata elements are needed to perform different tasks.
[An example of this is: author, title and subject represent physical and topical elements in the function of discovery.] The function of discovery requires the elements that represent both the physical and topical attributes of an information object, e.g., creator, title and subject. As part of the needs assessments of a digital library project, functional requirements for metadata can be assessed from an end-user point of view and the standpoint of the data/metadata producers and service providers. A functional requirements list may consider what the system would like users to search, browse, sort, filter, and view. Communication about the functional requirements between between both system designer and metadata creators is critical to the overall quality of a digital library.

## Cataloging and Metadata

- Cataloging early form of desriptive metadata
- Underlying models for cataloging based on AACR2 and MARC 21
- Some new metadata models are emerging (e.g, DC Abstract Model and RDA in development)

**Notes:**

[NOTE TO PRESENTERS:  Break down the acronyms on this slide and in your remarks.]
The movement to create FRBR (Functional Requirements of Bibliographic Records) relationships helped to break down cataloging practice into fundamental principles.
Dublin Core Abstract Model:  to get at the underlying relationships that drive metadata description.
If you use non-MARC metadata, look at the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) Abstract Model and the RDF (Resource Description Framework) Primer.
It is important to keep the underlying model in mind when creating new metadata schemes.

## One BIG Difference ...

- Catalogers most often are attempting to fit new items into an already existing world of materials--
- The structure already exists, as do the rules for describing
- Metadata practitioners are generally working with aggregated “stuff,” attempting to find a way to make it accessible
- Involves broad understanding, ability to work with others to make decisions that work for whole projects or domains

- **Thanks to Marty Kurth for these insights*

**Notes:**
Think about things at multiple levels.  Analogy with the archival process

## Exercise

- Examine the digital library sites below, and be prepared to discuss differences in user approach and experience. Look for how metadata is used.
- Alsos: Digital Library for Nuclear Issues (_[http://](http://alsos.wlu.edu/default.aspx)__[alsos](http://alsos.wlu.edu/default.aspx)__[.](http://alsos.wlu.edu/default.aspx)__[wlu](http://alsos.wlu.edu/default.aspx)__[.](http://alsos.wlu.edu/default.aspx)__[edu](http://alsos.wlu.edu/default.aspx)__[/default.](http://alsos.wlu.edu/default.aspx)__[aspx](http://alsos.wlu.edu/default.aspx)_)
- CSUN Oviatt Library: Digital Collections (_[http://library.](http://library.csun.edu/Collections/SCA/digicoll.html)__[csun](http://library.csun.edu/Collections/SCA/digicoll.html)__[.](http://library.csun.edu/Collections/SCA/digicoll.html)__[edu](http://library.csun.edu/Collections/SCA/digicoll.html)__[/Collections/SCA/](http://library.csun.edu/Collections/SCA/digicoll.html)__[digicoll](http://library.csun.edu/Collections/SCA/digicoll.html)__[.html](http://library.csun.edu/Collections/SCA/digicoll.html)__)_
- Birdsource (_[http://www.](http://www.birdsource.org/)__[birdsource](http://www.birdsource.org/)__[.org](http://www.birdsource.org/)_/)

**Notes:**
Invite the audience to comment on how these sites are structured.
When you look at a digital site, look at how they categorize the materials.  For example:  “Search” under keyword, title, creator; “Media” is broken down into article, book, CD, chapter, film, website.  Look at these sites not only as a user but also as the developer.

Alsos:  look at the six Browse categories.  We looked at the browse category for Science-Deuterium.  Allow the group to talk about the sites, content, and arrangement.

CSUN:  We looked at the first collection – Browse. This is a visual collection.  Talk about how to harness the knowledge of others to get more information about the objects.  

Birdsource:  We looked at the nuthatch (species).  We linked to the map.  It was pretty slow; frequency never did work.  Talk about what kinds of things you can get in Google and other kinds of things in the database that Google can’t reach.  Go to All-About-Birds.  This is the publicly available portion of Birds of North America.  This resource is from the Cornell Ornithology Lab, clearly not developed on a shoe-string.

The sustainability of metadata is driven more by how (and how well) it is distributed outside the home portal, and not how well it works in its native habitat.

Two books were mentioned as worthy of another look:
Information Architecture for the World Wide Web (Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville)
Ambient Findability (Peter Morville)