Metametametadata

Managing the Metadata Morass: Applying Cataloging Skills Beyond the Traditional Catalog

Boston College Library Catalogers

BC Libraries is project oriented, even traditional cataloging (monographs and serials). They’re giving up being on top of the print, by shifting to looking at all of the initiatives, old and new, as projects and then prioritizing projects. Suddenly the electronic initiatives seem more important.

7 professional catalogers, 8 support staff catalogers

?What about training and adjusting staff to the new electronic projects? Baby steps, intense time consuming documentation for first project, then experience takes over by third project.

BC Libraries Technical Services is getting into consulting, working with other people’s data and providing a labor pool of copy catalogers.

Their philosophy is to maintain a seat at the table for all digital production/information organization projects, inside and outside the library. They don’t say no.

[Where are they finding the money to pay people to stay at the table and provide a labor pool? It’s good to see MIT Libraries are not the only ones interested in data outside the libraries collection and their movement to consulting validates the Metadata Services experiment, but we’re moving away from production to consulting only. Where are they finding the money to maintain any kind of meaningful level of production?]

Most of their services and databases are off the shelf (only the Electronic Resources Management database is a do it yourself project)

ERMdb (homegrown, web-based, perl, linux, mysql, for lib staff only, a info hub for other systems/databases generating reports)

In building the ERMdb they followed the DLF ERM best practices, but designed their own metadata schema and cross-walked it to the DLF ERM schema, also designed UI, functional requirements and workflow

DigiTool (Digital Asset Management System, an exLibris product, Oracle DB) It’s still in pilot mode, attempting to create a space for electronic objects that would be on the shelf if they were physical. Concerned with technical and preservation metadata. Concerned with Sustainability over time. Technical and Preservation metadata is intimately associated with descriptive metadata and the object itself. ?Whence the support and sustainability for the system?

We will continue to host the systems and servers they have now and be prepared to migrate the systems forward at the right time. They’ve committed to sustaining the collections, no matter how they make them available. So metadata mediated interoperability of description and storage is key.

Right now they’re focusing on cataloging, cleaning up records and ensuring the possibility of metadata transformation and exchange. DigiTool is incorporating EAD and METS (used for page turning). Of course one of the first projects was slides for professors.

The BC speaker confirms that jpeg2000 will embed metadata in its header file.

Different data sources create wholly different kinds of metadata. They describe objects in different ways and have different relationships with their objects. Catalogers are required to reconcile different approaches in one system like DigiTool.

The catalogers have a good seat at the DigiTool table ensure robust metadata creation, interoperability amongst multiple metadata schemes and incorporating multiple object formats.

The Cataloging Group has a workforce (how, why?)

Digital Commons (Institutional Repository, A Turnkey System, Remote, Out of the Box, a ProQuest product). A pilot is up for ’04-’05. Populated with dissertations. Still defining rules. What metadata? The cataloger provided the name authority control question. They have a full time cataloger to provide metadata for all objects in IR. Is the eScholarship Manger a cataloger? Also provided knowledge of OPAC and the connection between records in OPAC and IR.

?Who runs the IR?