Kennedy, Marie R. 2008. Nine questions to guide you in choosing a metadata schema. Journal of Digital Information 9 (26). http://journals.tdl.org/jodi/article/view/226/205 (accessed October 26, 2008).
Kennedy assumes that the collection is already in development, with a known rationale for its creation, and that any copyright issues have been considered. She then lays out the following questions as guidelines for choosing a metadata scheme that will be useful for the collection’s users:
- Who will use the collection?
- Who will catalog the collection?
- How much time and money is available?
- How will the collection be accessed?
- How does the collection relate to other collections?
- What is the collection’s scope?
- Will the metadata be harvested?
- Will the collection “work with” other collections?
- How much maintenance and quality control is desired?
Kennedy doesn’t so much promote specific extant metadata schemes (like Dublin Core or others), as she instead encourages developers to pay attention to the needs inherent in their own situation. This is a very useful checklist for someone developing any collection, but particularly for someone working on academic or institutional collections and repositories.
3 comments
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Sunday, 2 November, 2008 at 3:40 pm
aimee101
Excellent food for thought. I have been exploring metadata, so thanks for posting.
Saturday, 8 November, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Donna Newby-Bennett
I really like the questions the author outlines for choosing the appropriate metadata schema. Through my reading, I have come to believe that there will never be just one, although it seems like a contradiction with the idea of standardization of vocabulary.
Monday, 10 November, 2008 at 3:35 am
Lyle
That’s a great article. Thank you for sharing it!