Hannah Tarver

Building a Framework of Metadata Change to Support Knowledge Management

Evolving user needs and relevance require continuous change and reform. A good digital collection has mechanisms to accommodate the differing uses being made of the digital library system. In a metadata management context, change could mean to transform, substitute, or make the content of a metadata record different from what it is or from what it would be if left alone. In light of the evolving compliance requirements, this paper analyses the three most common types of change within metadata records as well as their subcategories and discusses the possible implications of such changes within and beyond the metadata records.

Introducing name authority into an ETD collection

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop and evaluate a workflow for establishing name authority in uncontrolled collections. Design/methodology/approach – The authors developed a workflow incorporating command-line tools and tested it in the electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) collection. The authors narrowed the scope of the study to born-digital ETDs in the collection and to contributor names, including chairs and committee members. Findings – This workflow can save staff time and allows for flexible implementation depending on staff numbers and skills as well as institutional needs. Originality/value – This workflow could be used by other institutions with little or no modification, as it does not rely on specialized software or extensive expertise.

Integrating Image-Based Research Datasets into an Existing Digital Repository Infrastructure

In 2011, the University of North Texas (UNT) Libraries partnered with researchers in the universitys academic departments to describe and provide access to items not traditionally included in the UNT Libraries’ systems. Including more than 1,400 items apiece, the two projects are considered active datasets by their respective users. Each collection provided new challenges in harmonizing partner, metadata, and end-user requirements. This article discusses the projects, workflow for defining requirements, and final implementation in the UNT Digital Library. These collections serve as a model for integrating other research projects easily and inexpensively into a repository infrastructure.

Quality assurance and evaluation of change for patent metadata: Quality Assurance and Evaluation of Change for Patent Metadata

The quality of metadata greatly impacts access to information resources, affecting both precision and recall of the search results. Metadata quality assurance is especially important for unique materials that are not widely available outside of the specialized digital repositories that provide access to them. One example of such unique and valuable materials is digitized historical patents. This paper describes a case study of the metadata management for a digital collection of U.S. patents issued in the 19th‐early 20th centuries, discusses the results of the evaluation of metadata change intended to support the metadata quality assurance for this collection and presents plans for further research. We expect the study to make a contribution to understanding of metadata management and metadata quality assurance and the role of metadata change in these processes.

Extended date/time format (EDTF) in the digital public library of America's metadata: exploratory analysis

Considering the value of dates in the life cycle of the digital resource, capturing and storing dates metadata in a structured way can have a significant impact on information retrieval. There are a number of format conventions in common use for encoding the date and time values; the Extended Date/Time Format (EDTF) is one of the most expressive. This paper presents results of an exploratory analysis of representation of dates in over 8 million metadata records from one of the largest digital aggregators, Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), and compares it to EDTF specifications. This benchmark study provides empirical data – at both the individual provider level and the group level (content hubs or service hubs) – about the overall level and patterns of application of date metadata in DPLA metadata records in relation to EDTF.

Managing Serials in a Large Digital Library: Case Study of the UNT Libraries Digital Collections

The Portal to Texas History (http://texashistory.unt.edu) and the University of North Texas (UNT) Digital Library (http://digital.library.unt.edu) contain more than 445,000 items collectively, hosted by the UNT Libraries. These collections include a variety of serial publications such as newsletters, magazines, scholarly journals, annual reports, and yearbooks. Many of these serials are key resources for the user groups of both repositories. In this article, we discuss the importance of serials within our collections, some of the challenges, the standards we use, and how we leverage metadata to facilitate access to serials for diverse global users.