Metadata Guidelines for Digital Resources at Texas A&M University Libraries

These guidelines were written to help TAMU partners create high quality metadata for digital collections deposited in the repository at TAMU Libraries. The goal is to ensure an acceptable level of consistency and completeness of metadata across all collections in the repository in order maximize their potential for discovery for the TAMU community. These guidelines were also written to help Digital Initiatives personnel at TAMU Libraries to map metadata to appropriate fields in Dublin Core and MODS, the two most commonly used schema within the TAMU repository. The guidelines, as they are currently written, address metadata elements that may be recorded for ALL digital collections within the repository, regardless of whether they consist of text, still images, video, or any other type of content. It is likely that specific formats may require additional metadata than what is currently described in this document. More specific guidelines for various formats may be added to this document in the future. It should be noted that this document is a work in progress and will continue to be revised and expanded upon

Core Metadata Elements: Guidelines to Promote Consistency and Access at TAMU

In December of 2017, the Metadata Task Group was formed in response to answer a two part problem. One was to determine the metadata workflow for projects being placed into A&M OAKTrust digital repository. The other was to recommend metadata schema for the DAME, a relatively new concept design to create an inter-operability system involving multiple formats and computer programs. Although much of the focus was on how to handle workflow for digital projects and suggest metadata schema for two specific platforms (D-Space and Fedora), it soon became obvious to the task group that all metadata must be compatible with metadata in other systems within the DAME. Thus, we explored the necessity of consistent metadata and imputing standards in order to provide maximum accessibility to our users, while also trying to be efficient with library resources

Metadata Guidelines for Digital Resources at Texas A&M University Libraries

These guidelines were written to help TAMU partners create high quality metadata for digital collections deposited in the repository at TAMU Libraries. The goal is to ensure an acceptable level of consistency and completeness of metadata across all collections in the repository in order maximize their potential for discovery for the TAMU community. These guidelines were also written to help Digital Initiatives personnel at TAMU Libraries to map metadata to appropriate fields in Dublin Core and MODS, the two most commonly used schema within the TAMU repository. The guidelines, as they are currently written, address metadata elements that may be recorded for ALL digital collections within the repository, regardless of whether they consist of text, still images, video, or any other type of content. It is likely that specific formats may require additional metadata than what is currently described in this document. More specific guidelines for various formats may be added to this document in the future. It should be noted that this document is a work in progress and will continue to be revised and expanded upon

Report of the DAMENames Ad Hoc Committee

In early 2018, the DAMEid group requested that Cataloging and Metadata unit examine the metadata needs for the DAME. When analyzing metadata needs in both OAKTrust and Fedora, it became clear that the lack of name authority control was causing serious problems for users, especially in the case of a single author having many entries in the author index. For example, Steven M. Wright, Royce E. Wisenbaker, Professor II in Chemical and Electrical Engineering, has 10 different entries for his name. This problem is caused by the lack of authority control and the inconsistent ways in which names are inputted into Vireo and OAKTrust. In their report to the DAMEid committee, the Metadata and Cataloging librarians strongly suggested that some type of name authority control be implemented within the DAME. In smaller repositories with few names and fewer entities (e.g., persons, organizations, subjects, etc.), the absence of explicit disambiguation or authority control can be a manageable problem. When only a few authors share a name, it is easy to tell them apart based on the subject matter of the works attached to the name. The problem compounds as collections grow larger and the number of entities with the same name that need to be distinguished from each other increases. For example, in the large OAKTrust IR, it is hard for a user to identify the "Steven Wright" that he or she is looking for, as there are several authors so named with dozens of items in the IR. Another issue that emerges in a system with no authority control – such as OAKTrust – is that an everyday typographical error (an extra space, no period after an initial, misspellings, etc.) results in a new entry in the author list. This results in multiple names for one person and it means that there is no way for a user to easily identify all the works attributed to one author

Report of the DAMENames Ad Hoc Committee

In early 2018, the DAMEid group requested that Cataloging and Metadata unit examine the metadata needs for the DAME. When analyzing metadata needs in both OAKTrust and Fedora, it became clear that the lack of name authority control was causing serious problems for users, especially in the case of a single author having many entries in the author index. For example, Steven M. Wright, Royce E. Wisenbaker, Professor II in Chemical and Electrical Engineering, has 10 different entries for his name. This problem is caused by the lack of authority control and the inconsistent ways in which names are inputted into Vireo and OAKTrust. In their report to the DAMEid committee, the Metadata and Cataloging librarians strongly suggested that some type of name authority control be implemented within the DAME. In smaller repositories with few names and fewer entities (e.g., persons, organizations, subjects, etc.), the absence of explicit disambiguation or authority control can be a manageable problem. When only a few authors share a name, it is easy to tell them apart based on the subject matter of the works attached to the name. The problem compounds as collections grow larger and the number of entities with the same name that need to be distinguished from each other increases. For example, in the large OAKTrust IR, it is hard for a user to identify the "Steven Wright" that he or she is looking for, as there are several authors so named with dozens of items in the IR. Another issue that emerges in a system with no authority control – such as OAKTrust – is that an everyday typographical error (an extra space, no period after an initial, misspellings, etc.) results in a new entry in the author list. This results in multiple names for one person and it means that there is no way for a user to easily identify all the works attributed to one author

Report from the Metadata Task Group to the DAMEid

In December 2017, the Repository and Metadata team were given a two part charge. 1. Reviewing the Charge which includes • Putting schemas, standards and workflows into place in order to ensure interoperability and functionality across the systems of the DAME. • Consult with relevant stakeholders in the DAME, including: including curators, the Digital Archivist and Digital Preservation Librarian, copyright experts, Digital Initiatives, the Office of Scholarly Communication, and the DAME’s Interfaces & Discovery group • Focus primarily on metadata implementation with the DAME’s Repository stems 2. Recommending metadata schema for Fedora and DSpace • Do an environmental scan that examines how other institutions have approached Fedora and DSpace • Gather information concerning how metadata is stored and expressed in DSpace/Fedora. • Make recommendations for moving between these systems and achieving interoperability • Recommendations for schema, including preferred usage of controlled vocabularies • Recommendations for approaching metadata (i.e. templates, collection level or format) • Recommendations for assigning materials to either DSpace of Fedora • Minimal Metadata requirements • Recommendations for metadata creation workflo

Report from the Metadata Task Group to the DAMEid

In December 2017, the Repository and Metadata team were given a two part charge. 1. Reviewing the Charge which includes • Putting schemas, standards and workflows into place in order to ensure interoperability and functionality across the systems of the DAME. • Consult with relevant stakeholders in the DAME, including: including curators, the Digital Archivist and Digital Preservation Librarian, copyright experts, Digital Initiatives, the Office of Scholarly Communication, and the DAME’s Interfaces & Discovery group • Focus primarily on metadata implementation with the DAME’s Repository stems 2. Recommending metadata schema for Fedora and DSpace • Do an environmental scan that examines how other institutions have approached Fedora and DSpace • Gather information concerning how metadata is stored and expressed in DSpace/Fedora. • Make recommendations for moving between these systems and achieving interoperability • Recommendations for schema, including preferred usage of controlled vocabularies • Recommendations for approaching metadata (i.e. templates, collection level or format) • Recommendations for assigning materials to either DSpace of Fedora • Minimal Metadata requirements • Recommendations for metadata creation workflo

Core Metadata Elements: Guidelines to Promote Consistency and Access at TAMU

In December of 2017, the Metadata Task Group was formed in response to answer a two part problem. One was to determine the metadata workflow for projects being placed into A&M OAKTrust digital repository. The other was to recommend metadata schema for the DAME, a relatively new concept design to create an inter-operability system involving multiple formats and computer programs. Although much of the focus was on how to handle workflow for digital projects and suggest metadata schema for two specific platforms (D-Space and Fedora), it soon became obvious to the task group that all metadata must be compatible with metadata in other systems within the DAME. Thus, we explored the necessity of consistent metadata and imputing standards in order to provide maximum accessibility to our users, while also trying to be efficient with library resources

Metadata Guidelines for Subject Specialists and Curators Workshop Slides

Originally presented on September 23, 2019.Presentation introducing metadata guidelines for subject librarians and curators at Texas A&M University Libraries