Administrative Metadata for Long-Term Preservation and Management of Resources
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5860/lrts.58n1.4Abstract
An institutional repository is, among other things, a means to preserve an organization’s scholarly output or resources in a variety of digital media and across disciplines. Administrative metadata are critical to the preservation of these digital resources. This study, which surveyed fifty-four Association of Research Libraries (ARL) institutional repositories about their administrative metadata, was designed to create a snapshot of current metadata practices. It revealed no true consensus of administrative metadata accommodated and collected by the repositories. Moreover, responses throughout the survey indicate that in general, organizations are neither accommodating nor recording administrative metadata to any significant extent. If research libraries are to provide permanent, organized, and secure repositories for institutional scholarship and special collections, they must identify core metadata in the context of repository objectives, explore barriers to collection of administrative metadata, and strategize as to how those barriers might be mitigated or overcome.
References
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PREMIS Data Dictionary for Preservation Metadata
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(New York: Audio Engineering Society, 2011)nFor example,
PREMIS Data DictionarynMost obviously, Dublin Core. “DCMI Metadata Terms,” Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, 2012, accessed July 14, 2013, dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-termsnMingyu Chen, Michele Reilly, '“Implementing METS, MIX, and DC for Sustaining Digital Preservation at the University of Houston Libraries,”
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Catalogue of Criteria for Trusted Digital Repositories
(Frankfurt: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, June 2006)nCRL and OCLC,
Trustworthy Repositories Audit & CertificationnFor example, Charles W. Bailey et al. found that preservation is viewed as one of the top three benefits of the institutional repository.
SPEC Kit 292: Institutional repositories
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, 2nYakel et al., “Institutional Repositories and the Institutional Repository,” 339nSeamus Ross, “Challenges to Digital Preservation and Building Digital Libraries,”
World Library and Information Congress: 69th IFLA General Conference and Council, 1–9 August, 2003
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Library Hi Tech
' 24 no. 2 (2006): 222nDigitalPreservationEurope, “DPE Research Roadmap, DPE-D7.2,” June 2006, accessed July 14, 2013, www.digitalpreservationeurope.eu/publications/dpe_research_roadmap_D72.pdfnFor example, the JISC report, in citing the high cost of metadata, notes that “it is notoriously difficult to predict” preservation costs, in part due to the lack of practical experience on which to base cost estimates. James et al., “Feasibility and Requirements Study,” 41nSee, for example, RLG and OCLC,
Trusted Digital Repositories
, 19–20, and Raym Crow,
The Case for Institutional Repositories: A SPARC Position Paper
(Washington, DC: SPARC, 2002), 27–28, accessed July 14, 2013, www.sparc.arl.org/bm∼doc/ir_final_release_102.pdfnJames et al., “Feasibility and Requirements Study,” 5. The blueprint comment appears on page 35nKnight, “Preservation Metadata,” 97nDaniel Gelaw Alemneh, “Barriers to Adopting PREMIS in Cultural Heritage Institutions: An Exploratory Study,” in
Archiving 2008 Final Program and Proceedings, Washington
, DC (Springfield, VA: Society for Imaging Science and Technology): 71–80, cited in Devan Ray Donaldson and Paul Conway, “Implementing PREMIS: A Case Study of the Florida Digital Archive,”
Library Hi Tech
, no. 2 (2010): 276nPriscilla Caplan, “Preservation Metadata,” in Seamus Ross and Michael Day,
DCC Digital Curation Manual
(Edinburgh: Digital Curation Centre: July 2006), 23, 26, accessed July 14, 2013, www.dcc.ac.uk/sites/default/files/documents/resource/curation-manual/chapters/preservation-metadata/preservation-metadata.pdfnAngela Dappert and Markus Enders, “Digital Preservation Metadata Standards,”
Information Standards Quarterly
, no. 2 (Spring 2010): 5–13nDappert and Farquhar,
Implementing Metadata that Guides Digital Preservation Services
, 50n“Preservation Metadata,” Paradigm, accessed July 14, 2013, www.paradigm.ac.uk/workbook/metadata/preservation-considerations.htmlnSee, for example, LDP Centre,
CODA-META: Curation of Digital Assets-Metadata
(Boden, Sweden: LDB-cemtri, 2008) and Bronwyn Lee, Gerard Clifton, and Somaya Langley,
Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories PREMIS Requirement Statement Project Report
(National Library of Australia, July 2006): 28–31nFor studies of descriptive metadata or metadata more generally, see, for example, Eun G. Park and Marc Richard, “Metadata Assessment in e-Theses and Dissertations of Canadian Institutional Repositories,”
Electronic Library
, no. 3 (2011): 394–407; Jung-ran Park and Yuji Tosaka, “Metadata Creation Practices in Digital Repositories and Collections: Schemata, Selection Criteria, and Interoperability,”
Information Technology & Libraries
, no. 3 (2010): 104–16; and Jin Ma, “Metadata in ARL Libraries: A Survey of Metadata Practices.”
Journal of Library Metadata
, no. 1-2 (2009): 1–14. Lopatin surveyed library metadata practices for digital projects but was not necessarily surveying repositories. See Laurie Lopatin, “Metadata Practices in Academic and Non-Academic Libraries for Digital Projects: A Survey,”
Cataloging & Classification Quarterly
, no. 8 (2010): 716–42nGail McMillan, Matt Schultz, Katherine Skinner, '
SPEC Kit 325: Digital Preservation
(Washington, DC: Association of Research Libraries, October 2011)' Findings regarding metadata schemas in use reflect the findings of this paper; see p. 11nROAR and OpenDOAR both attempt to provide up-to-date and comprehensive listings of open access repositories. ROAR is hosted by the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton; it lists repositories worldwide and provides information on the growth and status of repositories in an effort to promote the development of open access. OpenDOAR is a directory of academic open access repositories, run by the Centre for Research Communications (CRC)nIn the questionnaire, “digital library” was defined as a repository “limited to digitized library or archive collections,” but in hindsight should have included born-digital library collections. Therefore responses fitting the broader definition were included in the “digital library” categorynSeveral respondents noted caveats. One organization’s repository could accept media files “but lacks dynamism to stream”; files can simply be uploaded to the repository and downloaded by users. Two organizations noted that while their repositories could accept many formats, the extent to which those files are preserved is format-dependent. Another noted that a set of files might be archived, but not necessarily as a “supported live object that can execute scripts.” Of course repositories can
accommodate
metadata for many types of materials, but this does not mean the repositories actually
house
all those types of materials. The survey did not ask for number of the various types of resources actually housednWhen this survey was originally drafted, AES57–2011 was in draft form. Due to an oversight, it was never added into the list of schema options before the survey was distributed to respondents. For the record, AES57-2011 was listed under “other” by one repositorynOne respondent selected “none of the above” and declined to specify what standards were incorporated into the repository schema; this respondent was excluded from the count of total respondents to this questionnOf fifty-four total respondents, fifty-three named their metadata schema; one selected “none of the above” and did not specifynAll other standards were incorporated by fewer than three organizations, and included the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI), Visual Resources Association (VRA) Core, Library of Congress AV Prototype for Audio, Library of Congress AV Prototype for Video, PBCore. A number were incorporated by just one organization: AES57, DocumentMD, FITS, harvestMD, hulDrsAdmin, hulDrsRights, textMD, MPEG-7, California Digital Library, copyrightMD, Library of Congress AV Prototype for text, Analyzed Layout and Text Object (ALTO), FOXML (for capturing audit history), and Darwin CorenOne respondent answered “I don’t know.” Because of this respondent’s answers to other rights metadata questions, the response was converted to “no,” and the respondent’s answers to rights metadata questions 12–14 were accordingly deleted from the data setnBased on two comments associated with the rights metadata questions, it is likely that batchloaded legacy metadata may account, in part, for the dearth of rights metadata. Two additional respondents’ comments belied a perception that rights metadata is not necessary if all resources are public domain, or otherwise of a kind. The inclusion of consortial repositories in the survey further complicates data analysis here, since it is not always possible to dictate policy and practice to individual consortium membersnOf forty-three repositories accommodating technical metadata, two did not specify elements and were therefore deleted from this data setnThere were thirty-five valid responses to this question. Four respondents replied “I don’t know” to one or both parts of the question and three respondents appeared to misinterpret the question; these seven respondents were deleted from this data set. (Although what
can
be collected was meant to refer to system capability, three respondents rated what actually is collected higher than what
can be
collected, suggesting an alternative interpretation of the question.)nFifteen respondents rated the repository capability “just right”
and
specified the number of technical metadata elements accommodated. One respondent failed to specify and that response was deleted from this data setnOf the thirty respondents who said their repositories accommodate some preservation metadata, three qualified their “yes” with comments which roughly equated to “coming soon.” One such respondent was able to specify actual elements in question 23, so that “yes” answer was retained even though it appeared that full implementation had not yet occurred; in the other two cases, no elements were specified in question 23, so the “yes” answer was converted to a “no.” After these adjustments, it can be said that twenty-eight of fifty-four surveyed repositories (52 percent) accommodate preservation metadatanOf the twenty-eight repositories accommodating preservation metadata, four declined to specify which elements were used, selecting either “none of the above” or “other,” without enumerating alternativesnOf the twenty-nine repositories recording source metadata, one respondent said “none of the above” but did not elaborate. Another, answering for a consortium, was unable to provide a clear picture of contributed source metadata and so did not specify information types. These two responses were deleted from the data setnThere were twenty-five valid responses to the question. Two respondents replied “I don’t know,” and one misinterpreted the question, basing the percentage on a mix of born digital and digitized content; these responses were removed from the datanThe list of tasks is a synthesis of information from a number of sources, including
PREMIS Data Dictionary; Trustworthy Repositories Audit & Certification
; OCLC/RLG Working Group on Preservation Metadata,
Preservation Metadata for Digital Objects: A Review of the State of the Art
, 2001, accessed July 14, 2013, www.oclc.org/content/dam/research/activities/pmwg/presmeta_wp.pdfnFifty-three of the fifty-four total respondents specified tasks supported by their metadata. (One respondent chose “none of the above” but specified no alternative and this response was pulled from the data set in calculating percentages and averages for this question.)nFor example, Hockx-Yu cites the “need for new, shared preservation services and information infrastructure” and describes the Joint Information Systems Committee’s vision of shared preservation services. Helen Hockx-Yu, “Digital Preservation in the Context of Institutional Repositories,”
Program: Electronic Library and Information Systems
, no. 3 (2006): 237, 239–41. Dappert and Enders describe digital content preservation as a “collaborative effort,” mentioning content sharing and a specific implementation to allow exchange of complex objects between heterogeneous preservation systems (TIPR, Towards Interoperable Preservation Repositories). Angela Dappert and Markus Enders, “Digital Preservation Metadata Standards,”
Information Standards Quarterly
, no. 2 (Spring 2010): 12–13; DigitalPreservationEurope’s
Research Roadmap
recommends the digital preservation community focus on developing services which “support the work of collaborative and distributed archival and preservation teams.” DigitalPreservationEurope, “DPE Research Roadmap, DPE-D7.2,” 31n
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