I have often witnessed what could be called the metadata crisis, a running debate within many organizations over the meaning of commonly used terms like revenue, which complicates what on the surface seem like straightforward business questions, such as how much revenue was generated during a particular fiscal reporting period.

The Duke DataAccessioner was built out of the need for a simple GUI interface to allow technical services staff an easy way of migrating data off disks and onto a file server for basic preservation, further appraisal, arrangement, & description. It also provides a way to integrate common metadata tools at the time of migration rather than after the fact. With a simplified interface and being written in Java it is intended to be easily adopted by smaller institutions with little or no IT staff support.

The MARC data format was created early in the history of digital computers. In this article, the author entertains the notion that viewing MARC from a modern technological perspective leads to interpretive problems such as a confusion of “bibliographic data” with “catalog records.”

As trays in a bento box hold several types of food, virtual compartments in image files can hold several types of data – from the pixels that make up the image to the text that identifies and describes the image. Not all image file formats have these compartments. But JPEG, TIFF, PSD, Raw and several other file formats can include any or all the following standard types of metadata: IPTC-IIM, IPTC Core & Extension, PLUS, XMP, Exif, Dublin Core

A new DCMI Task Group has been established on the issue of Metadata Provenance. The group aims to define an application profile that allows for making assertions about description statements or description sets, creating a shared model of the data elements required to describe an aggregation of metadata statements in order to collectively import, access, use and publish facts about the quality, rights, timeliness, data source type, trust situation, etc. of the described statements. The Task Group is led by Kai Eckert of the University of Mannheim and Michael Panzer of OCLC who have become members of the DCMI Advisory Board. See the charter for more information.

Traditionally, data about a digital image is stored separately in a central database which manages and delivers it to users. With the advent of digital images, it is possible to encode data about the image (metadata) into the file itself. This is called embedded metadata.

Working within the context of a range of metadata related initiatives in Australia and elsewhere, the Recordkeeping Metadata Project aims to comprehensively specify and codify recordkeeping metadata in ways that enable it to be fully understood and deployed both within and beyond the records and archives profession.

Tired of being held hostage to expensive systems that did not meet our needs, the University of Alabama Libraries developed an XML schema-agnostic, light-weight digital library delivery system based on the principles of “Keep It Simple, Stupid!” Metadata and derivatives reside in openly accessible web directories, which support the development of web agents and new usability software, as well as modification and complete retrieval at any time.

The official title for this session is “Discovery Tools for Archival Collections: Getting the Most Out of Your Metadata” and was divided into two presentations with introduction and question moderation by Jaime L. Margalotti, senior assistant librarian in Special Collections at the University of Delaware.

Wishful thinking matched with too little too late?