Improving access to digital resources: a mandate for order mandate: managing digital assets in tertiary education craig green, john wheatley college john robertson, centre for digital library research

The problem Fairly typical educational institutional experience Minutes/ agendas stored in library as single physical copy No list available to public Overhead to both college and individual for meeting information requests Learning materials not consistently available Materials stored in a range of paper-based and electronic formats Materials stored in variety of locations No college-wide strategy for the development, storage, retrieval and preservation of such materials Strategy at the discretion of individual curriculum managers.

The problem Learning materials only available to learners through teaching staff No way of browsing or searching information assets Library staff resource insufficient to process these assets and make them available using traditional means Insufficient in-house expertise to tackle technical issues at JWC Hence partnership requirement

Critical decisions College Assets No external IPR worries Public Assets Final versions published; no document tracking problems Useful assets What users actually work with i.e. the document, not its components or a collection of documents Simpler system with reduced number of assets Allows asset management overhead to be incorporated into current practice (mostly)

Metadata requirements Starting point is College use of system not requirement to conform to any one standard DC at core, but mix of MARC and LOM fields to support college needs Balance between what College needs and system interoperability needs E.g. Unit Codes for College needs; ‘Publisher’ for good quality records in wider environment Metadata for single records to come from mix of teaching and administrative staff Educational descriptions from teaching staff

The solution Web-based publishing interface Customised forms allow both simplified and automated metadata creation and capture Enabling metadata creation and asset management by administrative staff Integration of existing college systems eliminates duplication of effort E.g. course structures from student records system Authentication through existing Directory Services Automated metadata export for library system from SQL database

The solution 3 main points of access to digital assets Website browsing by curriculum grouping (digital assets) Website searching (digital assets) Comprehensive search of all information assets held by College Library management system Services created for use by whole College

Choices and automation Freeform choice Keywords Controlled choices Date of meeting, committee name, document type, Contributor Resultant automated metadata Title, Author, Filename, File Location, Publication Date Fixed automated metadata Status, Publisher, Rights, Language, Coverage

So what? Toolkit available to all for use as you wish Documentation Choices Training materials Etc Database structures, queries Web server scripts

Partnership Joint Information Systems Committee John Wheatley College Centre for Digital Library Research with support from Scottish Library and Information Council Glasgow City Council Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council

METADATA DIGITAL ASSET