Kate drones on about cataloging

RLG survey on metadata practices

June 10, 2008 at 4:49 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment
Tags: metadata, OCLC, RLG

This wasn’t at BPE 2008, but I read the report on the plane in between knitting. RLG Programs Descriptive Metadata Practices Survey Results, a nice brief report that’s available online from OCLC. It’s connected to  their “Changing Metadata Creation Processes Program” (so not a snappy title) which has the following problem statement:

Creating metadata that suits local needs, readily aggregates across communities, and is easily exposed to Internet search engines remains a costly enterprise lacking adequate tools and guidance. Metadata created by libraries, archives, and museums is generally not available to the user communities that look first to Internet search engines. Although mapping data structures has become a commonplace solution to integrate descriptions, real interoperability across the libraries, archives, and museums communities cannot be achieved without addressing differences of description at the data-content level.

Some of the text of Gather Evidence to Inform Changes Needed in Metadata Practice is a little impenetrable, but I do love that they note this:

There is no evidence available yet of what data elements are truly critical for users searching in a Web networked environment.

Go for it, OCLC!  We need research!  There is so much talk out there about how terrible OPACs are and how useless MARC is and SO LITTLE actual in-depth research on what’s really needed by users.

Being RLG-oriented, there is of course an emphasis on museums and archives in addition to libraries, and only 18 institutions were surveyed for the report.

Interesting that “the single most common[ly used tool to create, edit, and store metadata] … was ‘a customized tool,’ cited by 69% of all respondents. These include homegrown tools for creating, managing, or providing access to archival collections [etc. etc.]”  Which sounds like an awful lot, and makes you wonder what the commercial tools are lacking that makes this necessary.  But, then again, the institutions reported 263 total tools used, so if there’s only one customized tool being used at each institution, each institution could still be using several non-customized tool; it would be much more informative for us to know just what the customized tools were used for.  Were they used for the major portion of the metadata creation process, or for a minor part?  Grumble.

“Structure used to create metadata”: only 19% MODS (poor MODS), 65% MARC, and 59% DC (I’ve combined qualified and unqualified DC there).

Local thesauri: 69% are creating one for genres of materials (like us with that dang Format field!). Smaller numbers for topics, names, places, etc.  Would be interesting to compare all those Genre thesauri to see what they’re providing that other thesauri are not.

Libraries were more likely to expose their metadata to OAI harvesters than museums.  Hmm.

Overall, I’m bothered by the small sample size of this survey.  I realize it’s difficult to carry out surveys, but sometimes I wonder about the quality of library “science” research (this report blithely references another OCLC report, College Students’ Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources, and its statistic that “89% of college students use search engines to begin an information search”–WELL DUH.  Was “information search” defined or refined at all? I perform oodles of “information searches” every day that are far better handled by the phone book or a company website or an online forum or an agency website instead of a library website, because of the nature of the information I’m looking for. Come back to me with a survey that studies where college students are beginning their information searches for research papers or other library-appropriate stuff and I’ll give more weight to your numbers!)…uh…that was a really long aside…well, anyway, enough grousing.  I guess I’m glad that there’s research being carried out because we definitely need it, but I hope it’s good quality.