The IN Harmony project

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to describe a user‐centered approach to developing a metadata model for an inter‐institutional project to describe and digitize sheet music collections.Design/methodology/approachQuery logs analysis, card sort, and task scenario studies were used to explore users' needs for the discovery of sheet music. Findings from these studies were used to design an interoperable metadata model for sheet music meeting the needs of libraries, archives, and museums.FindingsThe user studies conducted demonstrated to the project team the need and methods for recording titles, names, dates, subjects, and cover art for sheet music described as part of the IN Harmony project. It was also learned that tying user studies directly to the design of metadata models can be an effective approach for digital library projects.Practical implicationsThe metadata model developed by the IN Harmony project will be reusable for other sheet music collections at a wide variety of institutions. The user‐centered methodologies used to develop the metadata model will similarly be reusable for other digital library projects in the future.Originality/valueThe approach described in this paper brings together standard user study methodologies with metadata design in a novel way, and demonstrates the effectiveness of a methodology that can be reused to plan metadata creation in future digital projects.