Multiple Perspectives on Metadata

Vienna 12/13 November 2009

Monika Hagedorn-Saupe: Metadata Harvesting in the European context In the field of cultural heritage there is a wide range of databases in use to document the books, museum objects, maps, films a.s.o. In order to make information on cultural heritage available throughout Europe and to allow easy access for scientists as well as the general public, a joint initiative on a European level has been put into place: the portal www.europeana.eu. Experts from the fields of libraries, museums, archives and media archives are working together in several European projects to build up Europeana. Currently, a beta-version of the portal is online - already comprising about five million objects. The metadata-format currently used is a basic one: ESE (an extended Dublin Core), based on a more librarian approach. In the museum field working groups in the US, CDWA-lite has been developed, mainly for art museums. In Germany a working group has developed the harvesting museumdat, which is based on CDWAlite, but extended in order to serve also other type of museum collections. Within the ATHENA project, which aims especially to support museums in delivering their data to Europeana, the museumdat standard has been crosschecked and further enriched by the UK standard SPECTRUM. By applying those standards it is much easier for museums to provide their data not only to Europeana, but also to national, regional and also thematic portals, thus allowing to link knowledge much more than was possible in the past. Context: Due to ongoing digitization processes, the topic of structuring and modelling content is increasingly being discussed and new approaches are being developed. Digital Asset Management Systems support users in analyzing, retrieving, processing, filing and citing structured information sources. From a technological perspective, XML-based systems are particularly well-suited for flexible and metadata-enriched methods of asset storage: The primary data content is augmented with additional descriptive elements by making use of modelling standards and markup languages. This facilitaties a multifaceted digital representation of knowledge as well as data interoperability. Unlike other platforms (e.g. Content- or Learning Management Systems), Digital Asset Management Systems place importance on the sustainability of digital assets as well as flexible long-term accessibility and controlled authorization. The conference will investigate multiple approaches to metadata strategies and discuss how these can support digital edition and preservation projects. On the one hand, metadata hold well-structured administrative, descriptive, technical and long-term preservation information about assets, while on the other hand, they present a domain specific semantic relevance that is embedded in the content of an asset. The conference will cover a range of topics including: • Ontology based metadata specifications • Markup language based edition strategies • Metadata Quality Assurance • Metadata and IPR • Metadata harvesting protocols & incorporation

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