Metadata for Digital Collections

Metadata creation and enhancement is a partnership between Bibliographic Services and McCain Library. Special Collections librarians and Digital Collections staff select and digitize materials from the Special Collection, Mississippiana, and de Grummond Children's Literature Collection. Basic metadata creation (administrative, descriptive, and technical) occurs during the digitization process, and most records are made available for public view and use without delay. Bibliographic Services is responsible for enhancement of selected basic metadata, focusing on title, description, creator names,dates, subjects, and geographic locations.

University Libraries uses CONTENTdm to organize, manage, and display its Digital Collections. Multiple collections with more than 10,000 items are available for the use of researchers. A wiki is used to keep a master log of materials ready for metadata enhancement. Digital Collections staff members add information in the wiki when new materials are added to CONTENTdm. When Bibliographic Services completes the enhancement of metadata for collection materials, that information is also added to the wiki.

The chart below is updated monthly to show the status of metadata enhancement of digitized materials.

Metadata Enhancement

(Last Update: May 3, 2012)

	Coll Size	Enhanced	Remaining	Complete
AAEC Editorial Cartoons	1,924	1,462	462	75.99%
Civil Rights in Mississippi Digital Archive	1,639	1,529	110	93.29%
de Grummond Children's Books	185	151	34	81.62%
de Grummond Children's Literature	743		743
Gene Taylor Papers
H.A. and Margaret Rey	444		444
Historical Manuscripts & Photos	1,822	36	1,786	1.98%
Kate Greenaway Papers	343		343
Maps	31	31	0	100%
Mississippiana	9	2	7
Oral History	297		297
Rare Books	389	10	379	2.57%
Robert Waller Photographs	1,582		1,582
Southern Miss History	1,813	629	1,184	34.71%
USM Art Museum	206		206
Finding Aids	65		65
Totals	11,492	3,804	7,655	33.20%

Best Practices for Metadata Entry

A locally developed best practices document guides the entry of metadata into 43 fields based on an extended Dublin Core set of elements. Metadata Best Practices for Southern Miss Digital Collections in its current form was developed and expanded from an earlier document. It is kept current to reflect our practices and national standards of metadata entry. Periodic meetings of Bibliographic Services and Digital Collections personnel for discussion of changes to the metadata fields are carried out. Changes to the document and our entry standards are made in the interest of providing the best possible searching results to users of the digital files.

 

Linda Ginn, March 1, 2012