Metadata for Digital Resources: Implementation, Systems Design and Interoperability

Marina du Plessis (University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa)

The Electronic Library

ISSN: 0264-0473

Article publication date: 14 November 2008

394

Keywords

Citation

du Plessis, M. (2008), "Metadata for Digital Resources: Implementation, Systems Design and Interoperability", The Electronic Library, Vol. 26 No. 6, pp. 925-926. https://doi.org/10.1108/02640470810921691

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2008, Emerald Group Publishing Limited


Metadata is structured information about an information resource. It is the link that allows end‐users to interact with objects. It can be compared with a label on a cold drink can. Without a label, one would not be able to see what is in the can and would therefore open all cans to find out what is in the can.

Metadata can describe both physical and virtual items. It is used to organise, manage, describe or retrieve resources. With the advent of technology, organisation and retrieval have become more difficult due to the mammoth explosion in richness and reach of information, and therefore metadata has also become important to ensure that this growth of information objects can be organised and retrieved. What needs to be taken into account in today's society is that the format of the information may now be digital, e.g. storing and retrieval of photographs, videos, games, different types of software, etc.

The fact that people can, over the web, change the format and content of digital material that is self‐archived in institutional repositories can make the enforcement of metadata more difficult.

Generally, all but the most basic access requires metadata. Less structured information or modular, incomplete information about parts of resources can enrich structured metadata and enable other functions. This book aims to highlight metadata when thinking of building a collection of materials, digital or other. Planning a digital collection, however, must take into account the reality that information is modular.

The book has useful sections, starting off with what is metadata; choosing metadata standards for a digital library project, creating metadata usage guidelines; creating metadata and the practical implementation of a metadata strategy; functions performed by a digital library system; metadata that drives discovery functionality; defining interoperability; interoperability and resource discovery; technical interoperability; content operability; shareable metadata and the future of metadata.

The book is aimed at students, academics, professionals and website builders. It is informative, interesting, easy to read and understand, and useful in practice.

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