Metadata Standards
Metadata is information about data
The Metadata Librarian will guide you in the discovery and creation of metadata best suited for your project. Your project may need special fields to help describe it and make it more searchable. There are also limits on the characters you can use in filenames and in metadata. For an excellent overviews of Metadata for digital collections, please visit Minnesota Digital Libraries Best Practices Page and Claremont College's metadata best practices document.
Metadata Requirements
Currently, when uploading, you must have the following. The Metadata Librarian will assist you in reaching this goal:
- Title of image or page or object being digitized
- Filename of digital object with a File Naming Convention
- OAI fields (Metadata Librarian will explain this to you)
- Collection Name
- Appropriate fields for your collection
- Upload Date (in YYYY-MM-DD format — see www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-datetime)
Avaiable Standards
Explore Metadata Standards that might fit your collection (the Metadata Librarian will work with you on selecting a scheme):
- Dublin Core. This is a standard adopted by a majority of digital collections in libraries and museums. www.bcr.org/cdp/best/dublin-core-bp.pdf
- VRA (Visual Resources Association). This standard is used by digital collections in the visual arts. www.vraweb.org/projects/vracore4/
- Geospatial Metadata. Federal standard for maps and other ways we measure the Earth — www.fgdc.gov/metadata/geospatial-metadata-standards
- METS (Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standards). This standard is outside the scope of CONTENTdm projects, but it does a great job describing metadata on many levels. If you are a metadata geek, this will appeal to you. www.loc.gov/standards/mets/METSOverview.html
Controlled Vocabulary
The Metadata Librarian will discuss with you options for controlled vocabulary if you have a need for it in your metadata. Controlled vocabulary is a way of tagging items with descriptions that are consistent. It can be something your team develops for your collection, or you can apply an existing vocabulary. This allows folks browsing or searching to pull up groups of similar objects in searches or links that you can create on a web page. It also helps people set standards for inputting metadata. Some samples of controlled vocabulary follow:
- Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names. www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/vocabularies/tgn/
- Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus. www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/vocabularies/aat/
- Getty Union List of Artist Names. www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/vocabularies/ulan/
- Library of Congress Classification. www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/lcco/
