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The project "Metadata Creation and Quality Control across Digital Collections: Evaluation of Current Practices" is funded by Institute of Museum and Library Services. This research project aims to evaluate current practice of metadata creation and concomitant quality control measures employed by libraries. The overarching research questions of this research project are derived from issues surrounding the metadata creation process, the employment of controlled vocabulary schemes, metadata quality control measures, and new competencies and skill sets faced by cataloging professionals in the digital era with associated consequences to LIS education.
The rapid proliferation of digitization projects by libraries and other organizations calls for serious research on metadata quality evaluation . As evinced through information sharing of non-networked traditional bibliographic collections enabled by authority control, successful resource sharing and access across ever-growing distributed digital collections demands semantic interoperability based on accurate, consistent and complete resource description. The critical roadblock in achieving semantic interoperability based on metadata quality control is posed by the lack of a common data model that is sharable and interoperable across libraries and that cataloging professionals. The development of such a mediation mechanism calls for an empirical assessment of the various critical issues surrounding metadata creation practice and metadata quality control.
The goals of this project are three-fold:
- Goal 1. To examine current practices in the creation of descriptive metadata elements and the use of controlled vocabularies for subject access across distributed digital collections.
- Goal 2. To identify factors hindering consistent, accurate and complete metadata description, and impeding resource sharing and access across distributed digital collections.
- Goal 3. To assess new competencies and skill sets needed by cataloging professionals in developing digital collections.