1. Beyond Description: Metadata for Catalogers in the 21st Century
Maura Valentino Metadata Librarian Oregon State University

2. Structural Metadata
When a book comes into the library for cataloging, we assume that the entire book will reside in one location. No one would think of ripping apart a book, even one with diverse chapters, into pieces and putting them in different places on the shelves. However, with digital objects, the operating system doesn’t need to store things in what we would think of as a logical manner. Page 1 of a book, next to page 2 of a book and so forth. An operating system places digital files where it has the space and metadata is used to keep all the data together. So without structural metadata, the operating system has no way to know what digital objects are related to each other. So file naming schemes and relational metadata has a purpose and without it, compound digital objects could not exist.

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For example, I digitized a book with handwritten marginalia and created 2 pdf files for each page with marginalia – one with the marginalia emphasized and easy to read and one where the entire page was readable, but the marginalia may not be. I named the files appropriately, and used this metadata (filenames) to organize the book pages.

4. Page/Chapter/Section
Whole Object Metadata
Title
John Adam's Diary
Author
Adams, John
Date
Description
Diary kept by John Adams for 12 years
Page Level Metadata
Title
Page 37
Date
1776
Description
John Adam's describes the signing of the Declaration of Independence
Since metadata is often used to describe very unique items, metadata can be used to describe a particular page, chapter, even notation in a book. While cataloging could be used to describe books at a page or chapter level, and sometimes cataloging is used to describe more than the whole objects, for example listing the songs on a CD. It is not normally used for this purpose. Let’s look at this small example. If we are digitizing a John Adam’s Diary, a whole item description is not going to be as useful as describing different sections, so a user could more easily find what is needed. So when you provide page level, or chapter level metadata, it may seem like a lot of work, but you are providing a service to your users and saving them work.

5. Full Text Search
As catalogers, there is no way to offer users of the library catalog a full text search. However, one could offer this option within the metadata for a digital object. Taking our example from the last slide, if one could search the full text of John Adam’s Diary, then creating metadata for different sections or pages is not as important because the user could search, in this case on “the Declaration of Independence.” However, this may or may not be as good for the user because, again using our example, if John Adams talked about the Declaration of Independence throughout the diary, page or section level metadata may be appropriate. So when you are adding a full text search, you may be saving yourself work and be providing a service for your users at the same time.

6. Preservation Metadata
Preservation metadata is used to be sure the digital object is not just accessible now, but also in the future. Checksum is a number that can be recorded as part of the metadata. If this number changes, the file has been corrupted. This is bit by bit preservation. There are also other ways that metadata can be used in preservation. For example, capturing university history has become important in many academic libraries. Archives often receive boxes of disks of unknown file type. In order to truly preserve the history and make the documents on the disk accessible, preservation metadata is used. Information about the file is recorded, such as the software that created the file and the hardware needed to read the file. Most of us use Excel now for our spreadsheets, yet many of us remember when LOTUS was the most popular. If we are preserving LOTUS files, we need to let the user know how to actually read the file. So if it seems useless to add the software used to make the file or information on an emulator, remember you are helping to preserve this digital item and make is useful in the future.

7. Video Surrogate
Just like a cataloger cannot provide full text in the catalog, it is also difficult in a catalog record to provide a video surrogate, also called a video abstract or video summary, for a video. This allows a user to access a specific part of a video. With traditional book cataloging, we give the user the location of the book and let the user rely on tables of content or indexes to find a particular section. With video objects, such as dvds, all we can provide is the location and an object (or full video) level of description. However, with metadata, we are able to provide both textual and visual video surrogates. Basically, a textual surrogate gives a description and a time stamp of different parts of the video and video surrogates provide a thumbnail image to represent various parts of the video. Both the object (video) and the metadata are electronic and that is what makes this possible.

8. Automated Metadata Management
In talking about video surrogates, I mentioned that this process is done automatically. There is a great deal of data being captured automatically in many different processes. There is information is being captured every time we take a picture. Time, location and information on the camera and what format was used (tif, jpg raw) are all embedded into the picture file as metadata. We are going to talk about data sets and often scientific equipment captures a lot of information automatically without manual interference. So you may be asked to add to existing metadata that has been captured, but needs some fields filled in manually or conversely be asked to use a process that adds automatically captured metadata to an existing metadata record. Automated metadata may not be perfect. But an automated process saves time and money and can reduce errors over transcription.

9. Rights Management
Traditionally, catalogers did not worry about rights management. If a library owned a book and a cataloger was cataloging it, it was assumed, if anybody even thought about it, that the library had the rights to loan the book and the patrons had the right to borrow it. Physical copying of the pages in a book is covered under fair use copyright law and signs explaining fair use were posted near the copyers and the catalogers had nothing to do with it. Since the change to digital objects, it is so easy to make digital copies and distribute them, it has become part of the metadata workflow to add information on what rights a user has to the digital file. Can a user distribute the whole work, can a user alter the work, do they have to attribute the work.. Obviously, with digital files, users can break copyright laws and do what they want, ie Napster, but with metadata, we can let the users know what they are and are not legally allowed to do with a particular work. We can also use metadata to actually prevent users from accessing a digital object. For example, dSpace will take information from the embargo field and only allow access to the item after the embargo period has passed.

10. Data Sets
Preserving one’s data for others to use is now a requirement for many granting agencies. This of course means that the data must be described. I realize that this is descriptive metadata, but I decided to include this because data sets offer their own set of challenges. Each piece of data must be described, but the data set as a whole must also be described in a way that another scientist would be able to reproduce the experiment.
Example

11. Now that you have seen some of the other uses for metadata, I am hoping when you are asked to organize file names or combine data from another source into a metadata record or fill in the check sum value that you will have more understanding of why the request was made and how your work is adding to the creation of a robust metadata record.