Museo&Web
Planning Kit for a Quality Site for Small and Medium Sized Museums
Metadata
This concerns information relative to complete text documents. The information is generally structured and subdivided into fields, allowing more efficient administration and retrieval.
Metadata are useful for:
- ascertaining the existence of a document with determined characteristics,
- selecting a certain type of document,
- locating a specific document,
- obtaining information on the use of the document located,
- allowing research across different disciplinary and linguistic fields by using equal descriptors.
From the practical point of view, metadata can be of two types:
- semantic descriptor metadata serve to identify and retrieve primary documents. These are descriptors of semantic content,
- administrative metadata are necessary for management of the structure. These descriptors refer to the procedures of filing and administrating the documents.
Administrative Metadata can be further divided into :
- technical metadata
- metadata for conservation
- metadata for use
In order to facilitate the search for a document and optimise internal and external interoperability, the Web page must be described with a sufficient number of standardised metadata.
Metadata relating to digital documents can be supplied by:
- the primary document itself through auto cataloguing used by authors, editors or specifically created work groups. These identify a set of metadata according to the traceability and identification of the museum and its activity;
- the work of professional indexers;
- automatic software that associates metadata to the document.
There are a number of metada schemes to use for reference:
- The Dublin Core is a series of 15 semantic descriptors (title; author or creator; subject; class or key word; abstract; index or other types of content descriptors; date; type of resource; format of the data - URL, ISBN, DOI or other identifier; source; language; relationship to other documents; spatial or temporal coverage; information on copyright). These descriptors were worked out by an international association to allow for a minimal description of any type of digital resource;
- Administrative metadata of the ICCU were worked out by a special study group to standardise the metadata necessary for administration of digital document in the project Biblioteca Digitale Italiana (Italian Digital Libraries)
- DOI (digital object identifier) was created by an editorial team and is a type of ISBN supplied on payment by international agencies.
Useful links
MetaMap
http://www.mapageweb.umontreal.ca/turner/meta/english/index.html
The MetaMap is a pedagogical graphic which takes the form of a subway map. Its aim is to help the information science community to understand metadata standards, sets, and initiatives of interest in this area.
Bibliography
- 'Marketing' with Metadata: How Metadata Can Increase Exposure and Visibility of Online Content, Version 1.0 8th March 2006
- Christie Stephenson, Recent Developments in Cultural Heritage Image Databases: Directions for User-Centered Design