Introduction to Metadata

1.1 Introduction: Metadata can be characterized as “information about information” portrays the substance, quality, condition, and different attributes of information. Metadata is essential in helping potential clients to discover required information and figure out if an informational index will address their issues before they invest the energy and cash to acquire and prepare it. Metadata is the information to be utilized as a part of portraying the properties of a specific protest in finding, administrating, and helping to recover the resources. (Introduction to Metadata)

The expanded accessibility of geospatial processing innovations has not just nourished the interest in geospatial information with which to perform required investigations (Guptill, 1999; Deng, 2002), it has brought about huge volumes of such information being created – by GIS experts and associations, as well as by those not generally considered as geodata makers (Schweitzer, 1998; Mathys, 2004). The information is plainly basic to the working of GIS, enough so to be alluded to as its fuel (Vermeij, 2001; ESRI, 2002), this surfeit could be seen decidedly. In any case, there are entanglements. As Tsou (2002) watches, the capacity and administration of geospatial information are in themselves significant difficulties. How information is situated in what can add up to a needle in a geospatial sheaf; regardless of whether such geodata, once -if- found, are fit for the wanted reason; whether they are perfect, a la mode and of adequate quality, all confer their own specific issues, even without mulling over information availability, copyright, authorizing, potential obtainment expenses and preparing.

Despite data medium or application space, it is plainly essential to report information resources in order to encourage effective capacity and administration (Gobel and Lutze, 1998). Geospatial information is recorded by metadata or information that portrays information (Hart and Phillips, 2001; Vermeij, 2001; Tsou, 2002; Hobona et al., 2004). Similarly, as geospatial information are reflections of this present reality, for necessities, for example, investigations and representation, geospatial metadata are comparable deliberations — of the information itself. Utilized not exclusively to depict a scope of dataset qualities, metadata additionally help with the area, assessment, correlation, get to and abuse of geological datasets (Luo et al., 2003; OGC, 2005).

1.2. What is Metadata?

Metadata is “information about information”. With regards to bibliographic data frameworks, it is the writer, title, put, distributer, subject code, subject heading, and so onward for books. On account of serials, it is the title, distributer, ISSN and so forth. So also, an instance of a financial balance it is name, address, signature, and so onwards. National Information Standards Organization (2004) characterizes “Organized data that depicts, clarifies, finds, or generally makes it less demanding to recover, utilize, or deal with a data resource. Metadata is frequently called information about information or data about data” (Hode, 2009).

“Metadata is organized, encoded information that depicts attributes of data bearing substances to help in the recognizable proof, revelation, evaluation, and administration of the portrayed elements”.

The expression “metadata” usually alludes to any information that guides in the distinguishing proof, depiction, and area of arranged electronic resources.

The term metadata is utilized diversely in various groups.

• Some utilization it to allude to machine justifiable data, while others utilize it just for records that portray electronic resources.
• In the library environment, metadata is usually utilized for any formal plan of resource portrayal, applying to a protest, advanced or non-computerized.
• Traditional library list is a metadata apparatus; MARC 21 and the administer sets utilized with it, for example, AACR-II, are metadata models.
• Other metadata plans have been created to portray different sorts of printed and non-literary articles, including distributed books, electronic records, chronicled discovering help, craftsmanship objects, instructive and preparing materials, and logical datasets.

1.3 Needs of Metadata:

Metadata is an orderly strategy for portraying resources and along these lines enhancing access to them. The essential point of metadata is to enhance resources disclosure.

• Resource documentation
• Resource determination, assessment and appraisal
• Resource distinguishing proof and area
• Improving the quality and amount of query output
• Electronic business to encode costs, the term of payment, and so on.
• Protecting instinctual property rights
• Efficient substance improvement and filing

1.4 Definition of Metadata:

The decade of the 1990s saw the development of a proliferation of metadata element sets for resource description. Metadata is “data about data-. It is data for the purposes of cataloging, searching, archiving, electronic discovery. displaying, and so on. The key indication of the direction of the WWW on metadata comes from the inventor of the WWW, Tim Berners-Lee. “Metadata is machine understandable information about web resources or other things” but “metadata is data.

The familiar library catalogue record could be described as metadata in that the catalogue record is ‘data about data’. Similarly, database records from abstracting and indexing services are metadata (with a different variation on location data). However, the term metadata is increasingly being used in the information world to specify records which refer to digital resources available across a network. By this definition a metadata record refers to another piece of information capable of existing in a separate physical form from the metadata record itself. Metadata also differs from traditional catalogue data in that the location information is held within the record in such a way to allow direct document delivery from appropriate application software, in other words, the record may well contain detailed access information and the network address(es).

NISO’s Understanding Metadata”, the National Information Standards Organization. a non-profit association accredited by the American National Standards Institute. defines metadata as “structured information that describes, explains, locates, or otherwise makes it easier to retrieve, use, or manage an information resource. Metadata is often called data about data or information about information.

A User Guide for Simple Dublin Core provides the following definition:

Metadata describes an information resource. The term “Meta” comes from a Greek word that denotes something of a higher or more fundamental nature. Metadata. then. is data about data. It is the Internet-age term for information that librarians traditionally have put into catalogs and it most commonly refers to descriptive information about Web resources.

Caplan points out the benefits of using a ‘new’ term to describe internet resource records. There is no residual meaning attached to the term ‘metadata’ as opposed to the traditional connotations of ‘catalogue record’. Coining a new term emphasizes the differences inherent in records describing network resources and indicates that these records will be used outside the library cataloguing tradition (Caplan, 1995).

2. Types and Function of Metadata:

In this section various types of metadata and their functions are discussed.

2.1 Types of Metadata:

There are three main types of metadata:

• Descriptive metadata describes a resource for purposes such as discovery and identification. It can include elements such as title, abstract. author, and keywords.
• Structural metadata indicates how compound objects are put together. for example, how pages are ordered to form chapters.
• Administrative metadata provides information to help manage a resource. such as when and how it was created, file type and other technical information, and who can access it. There are several subsets of administrative data; two that sometimes are listed as separate metadata types are:

– Rights management metadata, which deals with intellectual property rights. and

– Preservation metadata, which contains information needed to archive and preserve a resource.

2.2 Function of Metadata:

The various functions of the metadata are as follows:

• Resource Discovery: Metadata discover resources allowing resources to be found by relevant criteria; identifying resources; bringing similar resources together; distinguishing dissimilar resources; and giving location information.
• Organizing e-resources: Metadata organize e-resources organizing links to resources based on audience or topic and building these pages dynamically from metadata stored in databases.
• Facilitating Interoperability: Facilitate interoperability using defined metadata schemes, shared transfer protocols. and crosswalks between schemes. Resources across the network can be searched more seamlessly.
• Digital Identification: Metadata help in digital identification using elements for standard numbers, e.g. ISBN. The location of a digital object may also be given using a file name, URL and/or some persistent identifiers e.g., Persistent URL; Digital Object Identifier and combined metadata act as a set of identifying data, differentiating one object from another for validation purposes.
• Archiving and Preservation: Metadata are used for archiving and preservation. Digital information is fragile and can be corrupted or altered and it may become unusable as storage technologies change. Format migration and perhaps emulation of current hardware and software platforms are strategies for overcoming these challenges. Metadata is key to ensuring that resources will survive and continue to be accessible into the future. Archiving and preservation require special elements: to track the lineage of a digital object. to detail its physical characteristics, and to document its behavior in order to emulate it in future technologies.

2.3 Metadata Characteristics:

The achievement of the administration (or to be sure any administration which relies on upon metadata) depends on three basic perspectives: quality, amount and availability. Metadata quality alludes not exclusively to whether a metadata record is showed in a way that is consistent with a particular standard (and consequently is replaceable) yet whether it is unambiguously characteristic of the dataset it portrays, is finished and avant-garde. Steady arrangement of value, “fit for a reason” metadata guarantees client trust in the administration, giving catalyst to return visits and thusly improving its notoriety (Rackham, 2004).

For an administration to be of any utility, the number of metadata records offered ought to live up to clients’ desires. A lack of records gives little inspiration to utilize the administration, as odds of finding proper information will be low.

Metadata records are of negligible utility on the off chance that they are not open, paying little mind to quality or amount. Metadata openness in this setting not just identifies with the capacity to find and recover the fancied things, however, that they are displayed in a predictable organization and fit in with utilized gauges. A blend of an all-around planned UI and viable hidden web search tool are important to guarantee that the client is given the best-fit records, requested fittingly. Metadata that clients discover convoluted or tedious to find, get to or comprehend will do little to advance the facilitating administration.

The previously mentioned components are obviously related. An immense amount of metadata is futile without the affirmation of value, while a confined arrangement of brilliant metadata is of constrained value.

2.4 Why metadata are critical:

Metadata portraying electronic resources are fundamental in the recovery procedure. Awesome multiplication of electronic substance that is open through the World Wide Web makes it important to make and apply metadata models that will make the route more compelling. Existing web indexes achieve a little segment of Web-based resources, making viable metadata application a need.

Recent reviews document that although some metadata are connected to huge numbers of the Web-based resources, standard metadata plans are connected to a little rate of these resources:

A demoralizing part of metadata use inclines on general society Web throughout the most recent five years is the appearing hesitance of substance makers to receive formal metadata plans with which to depict their records (O’Neill et al., 2003).

As researchers, analysts and different clients keep on increasingly depend on data that is accessible by means of the Internet, institutionalized metadata plans turn into a fundamental component in the data recovery prepare.

2.5 Purposes of Metadata

Library catalogues have been serving the purpose of document description, discovery, management, preservation and harvesting for centuries. It was an established method related to information/document retrieval of library resources until the World Wide Web(WWW) phenomenon came into existence. In the age of WWW and Digital Libraries, the importance of information retrieval (precise and efficient) has increased rapidly. Web 2.0 demands a quick and semantically enriched information retrieval over web environment. Metadata serves this purpose. With the use of metadata, information retrieval performance could be improved, as it can establish context with the data/information/document. In the case of digital objects, metadata is the ultimate solution for digital preservation. Content management systems (CMS) are highly dependent on metadata for description and management of content in a virtual system. Haynes (2004) explained the importance of metadata in context to the maintenance of resources in a web environment as, “it is the metadata associated with digital objects that provides a common format for management and manipulation of resources.” Interoperability of web resources is practically impossible without the use of metadata. Haynes (2004) has summarized seven different purposes as explained by Day (Day, 1998), as follows:

i. “Resource description

ii. Resource discovery

iii. Administration and management of resources

iv. Record of intellectual property rights

v. Documenting software and hardware environments

vi. Preservation management of digital resources

vii. Providing information on context and authenticity”(p. 13)

With the advent of social networking, the purpose of metadata has been evolved. For the purpose of quicker analysis and response of web resources, the scope of metadata also evolved gradually. Haynes (2013) identified five major purposes of metadata over the modern web environment, which are;

i. Resource description and identification: Metadata describes web resources and identifies authentically with the help of several modern tools and techniques (e.g. RFID codes, DOIs, ISBNs, etc.).

ii. Retrieval and Dissemination: Discoverability of precise resource from the huge collection of web resources is a huge challenge. This challenge is addressed efficiently with the help of metadata. There are several metadata standards (e.g. Dublin Core) aiming to retrieve and disseminate relevant web resources efficiently.

iii. Preservation and Retention: Preservation of web resources for the future is an important task. There are several metadata standards which deal with this aspect. Metadata standard like Preservation Metadata Maintenance Activity (PREMIS) is completely dedicated for this purpose.

iv. Users and agents: With the use of metadata, it is very easy to determine who can access a particular resource on a web environment. Metadata is able to describe different types of access rights and protocols.

v. Ownership and rights: Intellectual ownership of a resource is a very important aspect, which can be protected by using copyright acts. Metadata helps to apply and promote copyrights on web resources.

Haynes (2013) depicted these purposes with a diagram, which is given below in figure 3.1.

3. Categories and Components of Metadata for Digital Library:

A metadata standard of Digital Library includes the main three sections: descriptive metadata, administrative metadata, GIS metadata. The Chinese Metadata Standard Framework characterizes the accompanying summed up components, which ought to be given need in reception while outlining a specific metadata standard and particularly be as per their semantic principles.

Metadata has been partitioned into five classes as takes after:

A. Descriptive metadata: Include the maker of the resource, its title, subject heading and different components that will be utilized to look and find the things.

Using for the portrayal of outer and inside characteristics of the articles, for example, title, maker, date, subject, dialect, and so forth. It incorporates:

• Core components: a summed up part for a wide range of the articles. At present, for the records and archive like articles, it is outlined as per the Dublin Core, yet simply receiving the component names and definitions.
• Local center components: a typical part for the neighborhood accumulations of Peking University Digital Library.
• Unique components: outlining for a particular kind of question in view of its attributes.

B. Structural Metadata: Describe how a thing is organized, for illustrations in the event that it is an electronic book made out of examined pages, each of which is a different PC picture record.

C. Administrative Metadata: Provides data to help deal with a resource, for example, when and how it was made, document sort and other specialized data, and who can get to it. For administrative data of the protest, it comprises of three components:

■ Object creation proclamation: digitizing strategy, condition, date, and digitizer, advanced copyright, and so on.

■ Instance: all inclusive advanced resource identifier, similar to DOI, URI, URN or URL; picture estimate, picture arrange, determination, adjusted date, different proclamations, getting to right.

■ User comment/remarks: for the criticism or remarks of end-clients.

D. Rights Administration Metadata: This is manages protected innovation rights Preservation Metadata: It contains data expected to document and protect a resource.

E. GIS Metadata: For the utilization of GIS. It coordinates the components of the transient and spatial data in enlightening metadata and is worked by the information handling specialists. There are two components in it: Spatial (directions) and Temporal.

4. Development of Metadata:

The term metadata was originally applied to those bibliographic description activities that were aimed at classifying electronic resources; general understanding of the term has since been broadened to include standardized descriptive information about all kinds of resources. This includes digital and non-digital resources alike. According to Priscilla Caplan “Metadata really is nothing more than data about data; a catalog record is metadata; so is a TEI header, or any other form of description. We could call it cataloging, but for some people that term carries excess baggage, like Anglo-American Cataloging Rules and USMARC. So to some extent this is a “you call it corn, we call it maize” situation, but metadata is a good neutral term that covers all the bases” (Caplan, 1995).

In his “A gentle introduction to metadata-, (Good, 2002) begins with the notion of the humble origins of metadata. He points out that even a simple citation contains basic metadata elements, but argues in favor of a more inclusive approach: An annotated bibliography, for example, also constitutes metadata which is very much like a list of references except that it also includes an extra level of description in addition to the basic metadata for the document.

Metadata relating to a print resource may consist of information such as author. title. year of publication, publisher, and so forth. This information may be organized in a card catalog card, or its electronic iteration. Both types of records are held in the library catalog, electronic or otherwise, which then becomes a repository of metadata about materials that are held by that particular library.

In discussing “traditional cataloging standards”. reference is being made to those tools that have been developed over time for the purpose of cataloging. These include the AACR2 with its editions, MARC21 formats and standards, Library of Congress Subject Headings, Dewey Decimal Classification, Sears Subject Headings, and other cataloging tools that libraries are using to describe and organize knowledge.

AACR2, for example, is an internationally accepted standard for descriptive cataloging. It contains rules for describing and providing access to all types of library materials including books, serials, computer files, maps, music, motion pictures. etc.. through library catalogs. AACR2 is also a standard for structuring catalogs with headings and references to provide links between items with similar or related characteristics.

How are metadata different from the traditional cataloging standards? In looking at this issue from the point of view of purpose or intent of metadata, one arrives at the inevitable conclusion that the differences are not substantial. Both approaches attempt to provide bibliographic description. This can be extended further to include the fundamental mechanisms governing the creation and the structure of metadata. Like traditional cataloging standards, it is governed by the same principles, even v,hen those are applied to a diversity of materials.

J Milstead and S Feldman argue that the term as applied to electronic resources “refers to ‘data’ in the broadest sense — datasets, textual information. Web pages. graphics, music, and anything else that is likely to appear electronically” (Milstead and Feldman, 1999).

What, then, is the reason for the evolution of metadata and what distinguishes them from what came to be known as traditional cataloging standards? The word “Internet” provides a short, albeit incomplete answer. The world of information has mok ed beyond paper and microform as the primary carriers of information. Digital resources have become abundant and with them came the need for classification. With their proliferation came the perception that the available cataloging standards could not be satisfactorily adapted to the demands of these new formats.

This development coincided with a new trend in publishing and bibliographic description. Publishers began to provide libraries that acquired their books with skeletal pre-publication descriptions of their books. As these descriptions became more accurate and complete, the libraries saw an opportunity to use them in their cataloging process. The door was opened to the idea that the library was not the only place where information about materials could be built into a record describing the materials.

As the amount of digital, Internet accessible information grew, librarians came to realize the need to apply some sort of scheme to describe them and that they themselves could not deal with the “workload”. Not everything that came to be considered information could receive the full cataloging treatment used to describe print materials. Prohibitive costs of full cataloging along with perceived inflexibility of existing cataloging standards were two of the key factors leading to the revolutionary changes in information processing; the development of a simplified. flexible standard or standards of cataloging that could accommodate the diversity of electronic formats, and taking cataloging out of the library.

Old and new metadata is based on common practices. Cataloging standards were created and developed as a way to organize information, in order to facilitate the retrieval and access to this information. Standards are the foundation on which all the cataloging and metadata rules are developed. Without these cataloging standards. a single item would be cataloged many times over and each cataloging record is like’) to contain different information. Without the existence of cataloging standards, it would be difficult to imagine how scholars could access information, how libraries could share resources, and how patrons could benefit from the library collection.

Cataloging standards help to organize knowledge and have served scholars and research very well in accessing information relatively quickly and efficiently. Cataloging and metadata standards provide consistency and also exhibit tremendous flexibility. As new publishing formats appear; micro-forms, sound recording. and computer files could serve as examples; new standards are developed to their description. The most recent developments in AACR2-2002 revision were made to reflect the need to catalog electronic resources.

In her introduction to a Special Topic Issue: Integrating Multiple Overlapping Metadata Standards of the Journal of the American Society for Information Science. Zorana Ercegovac provided an overview of the metadata development, in which she led readers through the pre-Internet era and the Internet era (Ercegovac, 1999):

Machine-Readable Cataloging is well-known metadata of the pre-internet era. It was developed at the Library of Congress in the 1960s and in terms of specificity. structure and maturity; it is a highly structured and semantically rich metadata. The purposes were to represent rich bibliographic descriptions and relationships between and among data of heterogeneous library objects and to facilitate sharing of these bibliographic data across local library boundaries. The emphasis is on the entire document; the surrogates are MARC records; the records are produced by human catalogers; MARC does not fare well with regard to management needs (e.g..intellectual property, preservation), or Evaluative needs (e.g., authenticity. user profiles, and grade levels).

In the internet arena, there is a tradition of evolving metadata. Since the early 1990s. distributed repositories on the Internet have had an exponential growth, repositories are contributed by different communities, and there is a need to describe, authenticate. and manage these resources. Therefore, new guidelines and architectures are developed among different communities. Priscilla Caplan described the metadata movement as “a blooming garden, traversed by crosswalks, atop a steep and rocky road” (Caplan, 2000). This metadata “blooming garden” can be viewed from different perspectives i.e. there is no limit for the type or amount of resources that can be described by metadata. For any area that shows a demand for electronic resource discovery and sharing, a metadata standard can be developed or proposed. Today. the resources described by metadata consist of bibliographical objects (e.g.. represented by MARC metadata), archival inventories and registers (e.g.. EAD metadata), geospatial objects (e.g., FGDC metadata), museum and visual resources (e.g., CDWA, VRA. Core, CIMI metadata), educational materials (e.g.. LOM ). software implementation (e.g., CORBA), and many others. The use of these metadata standards is not limited by language or country boundaries. There is no limit to the number of overlapping metadata standards for any type of resources or any subject domain.

5. Metadata for Digital Resources:

Management Metadata is a set of attributes used to describe an object. In reviewing the library and information science literature of the past few years, there is no shortage of views of the significant role of metadata in meeting the most pressing needs and challenges of digital resource management. Metadata enables users to find the resources they require; therefore it is an important component of any digital repository. Authors. librarians and information scientists use metadata to classify content for organization and retrieval.

Metadata creation and management have become a very complex mix of manual and automatic processes and layers created by many different functions and individuals at different points in the life of an information object. Figure 1 illustrates the different phases through which information objects typically move during their life in a digital environment. As they move through each phase, the objects acquire layers of metadata that can be associated with the objects in several ways.

a. Creation and multi-versioning: Objects enter a digital information system by being created digitally or by being converted into digital format. Multiple versions of the same object may be created for preservation, research, dissemination, or even product development purposes. Some administrative and descriptive metadata may be included by the creator.

b. Organization: Objects are automatically or manually organized into the structure of the digital information system and additional metadata for those objects may be created through registration, cataloging, and indexing processes.

c. Searching and retrieval: Stored and distributed objects are subject to search and retrieval by users. The computer system creates metadata that tracks retrieval algorithms, user transactions, and system effectiveness in storage and retrieval.

d. Utilization: Retrieved objects are utilized, reproduced. and modified. Metadata related to user annotations, rights tracking, and version control may be created.

e. Preservation and disposition: Information objects undergo processes such as refreshing, migration, and integrity checking to ensure their continued availability. Information objects that are inactive or no longer necessary may be discarded. Metadata may document both preservation and disposition activities. Other little-known facts about metadata are as follows:

1. Metadata does not have to be digital. Cultural heritage and information professionals have been creating metadata for as long as they have been managing collections. Increasingly, such metadata are being incorporated into digital information systems.

2. Metadata relates to more than the description of an object. While museum, archives, and library professionals may be most familiar with the term in association with description or cataloging, metadata can also indicate the context, management, processing, preservation and use of the resources being described.

3. Metadata can come from a variety of sources. It can be supplied by a human (a creator, information professional, or user). created automatically by a computer, or inferred through a relationship to another resource such as a hyperlink.

4. Metadata continue to accrue during the life of an information object or system. Metadata is created, modified, and sometimes even disposed of at many points during the life of a resource.

5. One information object’s metadata can simultaneously be another information object’s data (Gilland-Swetland, 2000).

6. Metadata Format and Standards:

However the term metadata is increasingly being used in the information world to specify records which refer to digital resources available across a network. By this definition, a metadata record refers to another piece of information capable of existing in a separate physical form from the metadata record itself. Metadata also differs from traditional catalogue data in that the location information is held within the record in such a way to allow direct document delivery from appropriate application software. in other words, the record may well contain detailed access information and the network addresses. There is a great diversity of perspectives on various aspects of metadata issues. For instance, librarians have used machine-readable cataloguing since the 1960’s to identify, describe and provide access to their collections. However. what worked well for libraries may not work in other environments. Similarly. the basic metadata required for describing an image or work of art or non-text objects will bear a strong resemblance to the metadata that describes traditional print documents. However, some significantly different extra elements will be required for a complete description of non-text images and multi-media resources. In light of this. some formats of metadata have been developed specifically for use in certain fields of study or type of information source.

Metadata standards come from various professional community efforts to support many needs in the digital environment. The literature reveals that different communities view metadata in significantly different contexts. No single metadata standard can be expected to accommodate the needs of all communities. Although some projects, such as Dublin Core have tried to develop a coherent set of metadata schemes that can work for wide range of communities, they have not yet provided a complete description or solution for all types of digital information resources.

A metadata element set has two basic components:

1. Semantics – definitions of the meanings of the elements and their refinements.

2. Content – declarations or instructions of what and how values should be assigned to the elements.

For each element defined, a metadata standard usually provides content rules for how content should be included (for example, how to identify the main title). representation rules for content (for example, capitalization rules or standards for representing time), and allowable content values (for example, whether values must be taken from a specified controlled vocabulary or can be author-supplied. derived from the text, or added by metadata creators working without a controlled term list.)

Many metadata standards provided an element set without considering the encoding format in their preliminary versions. For example, Dublin Core, Visual Resource Association Core Categories, Categories for the Description of Works of Art, and the Learning Object Metadata were all published and accepted in terms of their semantics and content long before the specific encoding methods for their data models were published. On the other hand, a few other metadata standards, like the Encoded Archival Description Document Type Definition, provided an encoded element set from the beginning. The EAD DTD, a standard for encoding archival finding aids currently using XML, was published a decade ago with an SGML DTD.

7. Fundamentals for Designing Metadata Standard:

The essentials for designing metadata ought to be based upon the three sorts of prerequisites of: expert/non-proficient catalogers, the qualities of resources/articles, and the end-clients of the advanced library. They are as taking after:

a. Simplicity and accuracy: Since the majority of the catalogers who do the portrayals are the specialists, pros, and the understudies in certain subject spaces, the metadata standard ought to be sufficiently basic for these non-proficient catalogers to learn and to utilize. Then again, metadata ought to likewise have the capacity to portray the protest precisely and keeps the recovery viably, evading the mistake alongside the straightforwardness. Notwithstanding, it is difficult to adjust between the straightforwardness and exactness.

b. Specialization and speculation: For the reason of contrasts of various articles and their attributes, it is difficult to portray them by just a single metadata standard. Changing metadata guidelines ought to be composed. In the meantime, considering the normality of the diverse items, the speculation of metadata standard is likewise required. At the end of the day, one metadata standard ought to apply to some extraordinary protests however many as could be allowed.

c. Interoperability and compatibility: Interoperability of metadata speaks to the backings for the interoperation between heterogeneous frameworks. At the end of the day, the metadata in view of the present Chinese metadata benchmarks ought to not exclusively be worked by every application programming of Peking University Digital Library, additionally be actualized in the frameworks of other association or organizations. In the pragmatic applications, interoperability goes about as compatibility. It implies that the present metadata can be changed over effectively as the basic metadata in other working frameworks, with the essence of a minimal loss of data that the metadata contains. In this manner, both semantic meanings of the components and metadata structure should be considered precisely, particularly its lucidness with the semantic guidelines of some current summed up metadata gauges, for example, Dublin Core.

d. Extensibility: Since the wide differences of the computerized resources and their applications in various fields, metadata standard can just give a general importance depiction to advanced articles. Some extraordinary substance going for the particular characteristics of the items are excluded in the metadata standard. In any case, considering the further and more precise portrayals in a specific down to earth application, metadata standard ought to be permitted to develop a few components or trait values. This expansion is created under the guideline of the metadata standard.

e. User requirement: Designing the metadata standard is with the end goal of better disclosure of the resources to clients. Subsequently, client necessities ought to be the last standard for confining the structure, selecting the components, and making the linguistic structure and semantic tenets. Moreover, it is additionally essential to give cooperation channel amongst framework and the end-clients, for retaining their remarks or criticism to metadata record and the articles.

8. Principles of Good Metadata:

Metadata, most generically defined simply as data about data, is an essential ingredient needed to support almost all current approaches to digital collection interoperability and aggregation. It may be sub-classed as descriptive. administrative, or structural. For some digitization projects full attention to all three sub-classes of metadata will be required to insure a successful project. In other situations one subclass (e.g., descriptive metadata) may be demonstrably more important than the other two. The metadata principles articulated in the Framework apply to all types of metadata and emphasize in particular the need for the digitization project manager to balance metadata benefits against the cost of generating the metadata. They also emphasize the importance of standards-based taxonomies and metadata schemas and the need for early planning of metadata strategies. Metadata is not an afterthought for a digitization project. but rather something that should be considered from the outset of project planning. T W Cole in his/her work “Creating a Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections” has discussed that what is to be called good metadata. According to him good metadata should be appropriate to the materials in the collection, users of the collection intended. current and likely use of the digital object. Good metadata supports interoperability. Good metadata uses standard controlled vocabularies to reflect the what, where. when and who of the content. Good metadata includes a clear statement on the conditions and terms of use for the digital object. Good metadata records are objects themselves and therefore should have the qualities of good objects, including achievability. persistence, unique identification, etc. Good metadata should be authoritative and verifiable. Good metadata supports the long-term management of objects in collections (Cole, 2002).

It’s is an important link in the value chain of knowledge economies. Yet there is much confusion about how metadata should be integrated into information systems. How is it to be created or extended? Who will manage it? How can it be used and exchanged? Where from comes its authority? Can different metadata standards be used together in a given environment?

Erik Duval, Wayne Hodgins, Stuart Sutton and Stuart L. Weibel in their study “Metadata Principles and Practicalities” set out general truths the authors belie\ ed provided a guiding framework for the development of practical solutions for semantic and machine interoperability in any domain using any set of metadata standards.
Application domains will differ according to the degree of detail that is necessary, or desirable. The design of metadata standards should allow schema designers to choose a level of detail appropriate to a given application. Populating databases with metadata is costly, so there are strong economic incentives to create metadata with sufficient detail to meet the functional requirements of an application, but not more.

There are two notions of refinement to consider. The first is the addition of qualifiers that refine or make more specific the meaning of an element. Illustrator. author. composer or sculptor are all examples of particular types of the more general term. creator. Date of creation, date of modification, and date of acceptance are all narrower senses of a date attribute. Such refinements might be useful or even essential in a given metadata application, but for general interoperability purposes. the values or such elements can be thought of as sub-types of a broader element.

The second variety of refinement involves the specification of particular schemes or value sets that define the range of values for a given element. Thus. identifying that a metadata value has been selected from a controlled vocabulary or has been constructed according to a particular algorithm may make it much more useful. especially for automated processing. In this way, semantic interoperability across applications can be increased, by relying on a common value set. The encoding of dates and times is an example of the use of an encoding standard to remove ambiguity from the expression of a metadata value. The string 03/06’02 is interpreted as March 6, 2002, in North America and June 3, 2002, in Europe and Australia. By using an encoding standard such as the W3C date and time format [W3C-DTF], a date can be encoded in an unambiguous manner (2002-03-061. Specifying the encoding format in the metadata allows unambiguous machine processing as well as improving human comprehension.

The use of controlled vocabularies is another important approach to refinement that improves the precision for descriptions and leverages the substantial intellectual investment made by many domains to improve subject access to resources. The Dewey Decimal Classification System, for example, affords a multilingual classification system long used in traditional library environments that can he applied to electronic resources as well. There are hundreds of domain-specific thesauri and classification systems, as well, that can be imported into the web metadata architecture to support subject descriptions. Specifying the use of a particular vocabulary in a given collection of metadata will allow applications to provide more coherent search and browsing facilities. Even in cases where an application is not designed to take advantage of a classification scheme or thesaurus, users may still benefit from the inherent coherence that such a scheme affords.

It is essential to adopt metadata architectures that respect linguistic and cultural diversity. The Web as a global information system is important in that it affords unprecedented access to resources of global scope. However, unless such resources can be made available to users in their native languages, in appropriate character sets. and with metadata appropriate to management of the resources, the web will fail to achieve its potential as a global information system.

Standards typically deal with these issues through the complementary processes of internationalization and localization: the former process relates to the creation of “neutral” standards, whereas the latter refers to the adaptation of such a neutral standard to a local context.

It is important to note that these two processes can sometimes work at cross-purposes. Global resource discovery is best served by internationalization (common conventions of practice, languages, and character sets), the needs of any given community may be better served by supporting local conventions. One of the challenges for global metadata architecture is to assure that the underlying infrastructure can support either-strategy equally well, or a mix of the two. Thus, a given application will reflect design choices based on an understanding of this balance and its implications.

A basic starting point in promoting global metadata architecture is to translate relevant specification and standards documents into a variety of languages. DCMI maintains a list of translations of its basic documents. Likewise, the European Workshop on Learning Technologies is maintaining translations of the LOM specification (Duval et al, 2002).

---

This Article Collected from:

• Patra, C. (2010). Digital repository in ceramics A Metadata study. Retrieved from: http://hdl.handle.net/10603/212642
• Dodiya, I. N. (2017). Usability of dbms complement with open archives initiative protocol for metadata harvesting in india a study. Retrieved from: http://hdl.handle.net/10603/181582
• Biswas, S. (2017). Integrated ontology for information resource description. Retrieved from: http://hdl.handle.net/10603/246207