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Part I: Analysis of Repository Metadata

Metadata Quality in Digital Repositories: A Survey of the Current State of the Art

Pages 213-228
Received 01 Jul 2008
Accepted 01 Oct 2008
Published online: 03 Apr 2009
 

This study presents the current state of research and practice on metadata quality through focus on the functional perspective on metadata quality, measurement, and evaluation criteria coupled with mechanisms for improving metadata quality. Quality metadata reflect the degree to which the metadata in question perform the core bibliographic functions of discovery, use, provenance, currency, authentication, and administration. The functional perspective is closely tied to the criteria and measurements used for assessing metadata quality. Accuracy, completeness, and consistency are the most common criteria used in measuring metadata quality in the literature. Guidelines embedded within a Web form or template perform a valuable function in improving the quality of the metadata. Results of the study indicate a pressing need for the building of a common data model that is interoperable across digital repositories.

This study is supported through a research award from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. I thank the guest editors and reviewers for their invaluable comments and suggestions. My appreciation also to Caimei Lu for her assistance during the preparation of this study.

Notes

1. W. E. Moen, E. L. Steward, and C. R. McClure, “The Role of Content Analysis in Evaluating Metadata for the U.S. Government Information Locator Service: Results from an Exploratory Study,” 1997, http://www.unt.edu/wmoen/publications/GILSMDContentAnalysis.htm.

2. Marieke Guy, Andy Powell, and Michael Day, “Improving the Quality of Metadata in E-print Archives,” Ariadne 38 (2004), http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue38/guy/

3. Ibid.; For the utility of metadata in the context of user service, see also Diane Hillmann, Naomi Dushay, and Jon Phipps, “Improving Metadata Quality: Augmentation and Recombination” (paper presented at the International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications (DC-2004), Shanghai, China, 2004).

4. National Information Standards Organization, A Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections (Bethesda, MD: NISO Press, 2007), 61–2.

5. Y. G. Lei, M. Sabou, V. Lopez, J. H. Zhu, V. Uren, and E. Motta, “An Infrastructure for Acquiring High Quality Semantic Metadata,” in Semantic Web: Research and Applications, ed. J. Dominque (Berlin: Springer, 2006): 230–44.

6. International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions. Cataloging Section. “Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records: Final Report,” 1998, http://www.ifla.org/VII/s13/frbr/frbr.htm.

7. S. Currier, J. Barton, R. O’Beirne, and B. Ryan. “Quality Assurance for Digital Learning Object Repositories: Issues for the Metadata Creation Process,” ALT-J Research in Learning Technology 12, no. 1 (2004): 5–20.

8. J. Barton, S. Currier, and J. Hey, “Building Quality Assurance into Metadata Creation: An Analysis Based on the Learning Objects and E-Prints Communities of Practice” (paper presented at the 2003 Dublin Core Conference Supporting Communities of Discourse and Practice-Metadata Research and Applications, Seattle, Washington, 2003), 8.

9. Guy, Powell, and Day, “Improving the Quality of Metadata in E-print Archives.”

10. Jane Greenberg, M. C. Pattuelli, B. Parsia, and W. D. Robertson, “Author-Generated Dublin Core Metadata for Web Resources: A Baseline Study in an Organization,” Journal of Digital Information 2, no. 2 (2001): 1–10.

11. Guy, Powell, and Day, “Improving the Quality of Metadata in E-print Archives.”

12. Jung-ran Park, “Hindrances in Semantic Mapping among Metadata Schemes:  A Linguistic Perspective,” Journal of Internet Cataloging 5, no. 3 (2002): 59–79. In this article, it is stressed that synonymy and polysemy pose particular challenges in semantic interoperability across heterogeneous knowledge organization schemes. See also Jung-ran Park, “Evolution of a Concept Network and Its Implications to Knowledge Representation,” Journal of Documentation 63, no. 6 (2007): 963–83.

13. Jung-ran Park, “Semantic Interoperability and Metadata Quality: An Analysis of Metadata Item Records of Digital Image Collections,” Knowledge Organization 33, no. 1 (2006): 20–34.

14. E. Barker and B. Ryan, “The Higher Level Skills for Industry Repository: Case Studies in Implementing Metadata Standards,” CETIS: Centre for Educational Technology Interoperability Standards, 2003, http://metadata.cetis.ac.uk/guides/usage_survey/cs_hlsi.pdf.

15. Jeff Heflin and James Hendler, “Semantic Interoperability on the Web” (paper presented at the Extreme Markup Languages, Montreal, 2000), 2, http://www.cs.umd.edu/projects/plus/SHOE/pubs/extreme2000.pdf.

16. J. Barton, S. Currier, and J. Hey, “Building Quality Assurance into Metadata Creation: An Analysis Based on the Learning Objects and E-Prints Communities of Practice” “(paper presented at the 2003 Dublin Core Conference Supporting Communities of Discourse and Practice-Metadata Research and Applications, Seattle, Washington, 2003), 8.

17. Sarah L. Shreeves, Ellen M. Knutson, Besiki Stvilia, Carole L. Palmer, Michael B. Twidale, and Timothy W. Cole, “Is ‘Quality’ Metadata ‘Shareable’ Metadata? The Implications of Local Metadata Practices for Federated Collections,” in the Proceedings of the Twelfth National Conference of the Association of College and Research Libraries, ed. H. Thompson (Chicago, IL: Association of College and Research Libraries, 2005), 223–37.

18. P. Shin, “Towards Making the NSDL Collection More Accessible Though a Testbed,” Report from the Annual NSDL Meeting (November 14–17, 2004).

19. Ann Bui and Jung-ran Park, “An Assessment of Metadata Quality: A Case Study of the National Science Digital Library Metadata Repository,” in Information Science Revisited: Approaches to Innovation, ed. H. Moukdad, CAIS/ACSI 2006 Proceedings of the 2006 annual conference of the Canadian Association for Information Science held with the Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities of Canada, Toronto, Ontario, June 1–3, 2006, http://www.cais-acsi.ca/proceedings/2006/bui_2006.pdf.

20. Marcia Zeng, “Metadata Quality Study for the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) Metadata Repository” (paper presented at the Research and Teaching Talk Series, Information Science and Technology, Drexel University, 2006).

21. International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions. Cataloging Section: 1998.

22. Moen, Steward, and McClure, “The Role of Content Analysis in Evaluating Metadata for the U.S. Government.”

23. Statistics Canada, Minister of Industry, Statistics Canada's Quality Assurance Framework, 2002, http://www.statcan.ca/english/freepub/12–586-XIE/12–586-XIE02001.pdf.

24. Thomas R. Bruce and Diane Hillmann, “The Continuum of Metadata Quality: Defining, Expressing, Exploiting,” in Metadata in Practice, eds. D. Hillmann and E. L. Westbrooks (Chicago: American Library Association, 2004).

25. Les Gasser and Besiki Stvilia, “A New Framework for Information Quality,” in Technical Report (Champaign: University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, 2001). For the information quality framework proposed by Stvilia et al., see the following: B. Stvilia, L. Gasser, M. Twidale, S. Shreeves, and T. Cole, “Metadata Quality for Federated Collections” (paper presented at the International Conference on Information Quality, ICIQ 2004, Cambridge, MA, 2004).

26. Shreeves et al., “Is ‘Quality’ Metadata ‘Shareable’ Metadata?”

27. B. Hughes, “Metadata Quality Evaluation: Experience from the Open Language Archives Community”,” in Digital Libraries: International Collaboration and Cross-Fertilization, Proceedings of 7th International Conference on Asian Digital Libraries, eds. Z. Chen et al. (Shanghai, China, 2004), 320–29.

28. R. Tolosana-Calasanz, J. A. Alvarez-Robles, J. Lacasta, J. Nogueras-Iso, P. R. Muro-Medrano, and F. J. Zarazaga-Soria, “On the Problem of Identifying the Quality of Geographic Metadata,” Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries (2006), 32–43.

29. Moen, Steward, and McClure, “The Role of Content Analysis in Evaluating Metadata for the U.S. Government.”

30. Jung-ran Park, “Semantic Interoperability across Digital Image Collections: A Pilot Study on Metadata Mapping,” in Data, Information, and Knowledge in a Networked World, ed. L. Vaughan, CAIS/ACSI Proceedings of the 2005 annual conference of the Canadian Association for Information Science, London, Ontario, Canada, June 2–4, 2005, http://www.cais-acsi.ca/proceedings/2005/park_J_2005.pdf; Bui and Park, “An Assessment of Metadata Quality.”

31. A. J. Wilson, “Toward Releasing the Metadata Bottleneck—A Baseline Evaluation of Contributor-Supplied Metadata,” Library Resources & Technical Services 51, no. 1 (2007): 16–28.

32. Greenberg et al., “Author-Generated Dublin Cire Metadata for Web Resources”; Jeff Rothenberg, “Metadata to Support Data Quality and Longevity” (paper presented at the the1st IEEE Metadata Conference, Maryland, 1996).

33. Zeng, “Metadata Quality Study.”

34. Bruce and Hillman, “The Continuum of Metadata Quality.”

35. Greenberg et al., “Author-Generated Dublin Cire Metadata for Web Resources”; Wilson, “Toward Releasing the Metadata Bottleneck.”

36. Park, “Semantic Interoperability across Digital Image Collections.”

37. Gasser and Stvilia, “A New Framework for Information Quality.”

38. Zeng, “Metadata Quality Study.”

39. Currier’ et al., “Quality Assurance for Digital Learning Object Repositories”; Jeffrey Beall, “Metadata and Data Quality Problems in the Digital Library,” Journal of Digital Information 6, no. 3 (2005).

40. Marilyn McClelland, David McArthur, and Sarah Giersch, “Challenges for Service Providers When Importing Metadata in Digital Libraries,” D-Lib Magazine 8, no. 4 (2002).

41. Lloyd Sokvitne, “An Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Current Dublin Core Metadata for Retrieval” (paper presented at the VALA: Victorian Association for Library Automation, 2000), http://www.vala.org.au/vala2000/2000pdf/Sokvitne.PDF.

42. Park, “Semantic Interoperability across Digital Image Collections”; Park, “Semantic Interoperability and Metadata Quality”; P. Caplan, Metadata Fundamentals for All Libraries (Chicago: American Library Association, 2003).

43. Wilson, “Toward Releasing the Metadata Bottleneck.”

44. Gasser and Stvilia, “A New Framework for Information Quality.”

45. Zeng, “Metadata Quality Study.”

46. Park, “Semantic Interoperability and Metadata Quality.”

47. Carol Jean Godby, Devon Smith, and Eric Childress, “Two Paths to Interoperable Metadata” (paper presented at the DC-2003 Supporting Communities of Discourse and Practice—Metadata Research & Applications, Seattle, Washington, 2003).

48. See the following studies: Thomas R. Bruce and Diane Hillmann, “The Continuum of Metadata Quality: Defining, Expressing, Exploiting,” in Metadata in Practice, eds. D. Hillmann and E. L. Westbrooks (Chicago: American Library Association, 2004); Currier et al., “Quality Assurance for Digital Learning Object Repositories”; Barton, “Building Quality Assurance into Metadata Creation.”

49. Jung-ran Park and Caimei Lu, “An Analysis of Seven Metadata Creation Guidelines: Issues and Implications,” in 2008 Annual ER&L (Electronic Resources & Libraries) Conference (Atlanta, Georgia, 2008).

50. Rachel Heery, “Metadata Future: Steps toward Semantic Interoperability”, in Metadata in Practice, eds. D. Hillmann and E. L. Westbrooks (Chicago: American Library Association, 2004); Park, “Semantic Interoperability and Metadata Quality.”

51. Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, “DCMI Tools and Software,” http://dublincore.org/tools.

52. UKOLN, “DC-Dot's Dublin Core Metadata Editor,” http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/dcdot/.

53. UKOLN, “RSLP Collection Development,” http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/rslp/tool/.

54. Greenberg et al., “Author-Generated Dublin Cire Metadata for Web Resources.”

55. Jane Greenberg, K. Spurgin, and A. Crystal, “Final Report for the AMEGA (Automatic Metadata Generation Applications) Project.” UNC School of Information and Library Science (2005).

56. Marek Hatala and Steven Forth, “A Comprehensive System for Computer-Aided Metadata Generation” (paper presented at the 2003 WWW, Budapest, Hungary, 2003).

57. Kris Cardinaels, Michael Meire, and Erik Duval, “Automating Metadata Generation: The Simple Indexing Interface” (paper presented at the 14th international conference on World Wide Web, Chiba, Japan, 2005).

58. Michael Meire, Xavier Ochoa, and Erik Duval, “Samgi: Automatic Metadata Generation V2.0” (paper presented at the World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications (EDMEDIA), Chesapeake, VA, 2007).

59. L. Ying, D. Chitra, and F. Robert, “Creating Magic: System for Generating Learning Object Metadata for Instructional Content” (paper presented at the 13th annual ACM international conference on Multimedia, Singapore, 2005).

60. J. R. Robertson, “Metadata Quality: Implications for Library and Information Science Professionals,” Library Review 54, no. 5 (2005): 295–300.

61. Jung-ran Park and Caimei Lu, “Metadata Professionals: Roles and Competencies as Reflected in Job Announcements, 2003–2006,” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, 47(2): 145–160; Jung-ran Park, Caimei Lu, and Linda Marion, “Cataloging Professionals in Digital Environment: A Content Analysis of Job Descriptions,” Journal of American Society of Information Science and Technology (accessed January 9, 2007), http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/121629757/abstract.

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