Metadata Community Research Articles

Core Competencies for Cataloging and Metadata Professional Librarians: Assessment of Community Use and Recommendations for the Future of the Document

The Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) Board of Directors approved the Core Competencies for Cataloging and Metadata Professional Librarians, hereafter referred to as the “Core Competencies,” in January 2017. The Core Competencies lists the skills required of professionals performing cataloging and metadata work in libraries of all types. In the six years since the document’s release, the cataloging and metadata community has adopted new cataloging standards, experimented with new tools, and engaged in conversations and reparative efforts around inclusive metadata. In this paper, we, the authors of the Core Competencies, report the results of our survey research that assessed the current use of the document within the cataloging and metadata community and solicited comments on ways in which the document might be revised. We conclude with recommendations for immediate changes to the document, and for its future use and maintenance.

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear understanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5,6,7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8,9,10,11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world's most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepresented in biodiversity databases.13,14,15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may eliminate pieces of the Amazon's biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological communities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple organism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region's vulnerability to environmental change. 15%-18% of the most neglected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lost.

FAIR data and metadata: GNSS precise positioning user perspective

ABSTRACTThe FAIR principles of Wilkinson et al. [1] are finding their way from research into application domains, one of which is the precise positioning with global satellite navigation systems (GNSS). Current GNSS users demand that data and services are findable online, accessible via open protocols (by both, machines and humans), interoperable with their legacy systems and reusable in various settings. Comprehensive metadata are essential in seamless communication between GNSS data and service providers and their users, and, for decades, geodetic and geospatial standards are efficiently implemented to support this. However, GNSS user community is transforming from precise positioning by highly specialised use by geodetic professionals to every-day precise positioning by autonomous vehicles or wellness obsessed citizens. Moreover, rapid technological developments allow alternative ways of offering data and services to their users. These transforming circumstances warrant a review whether metadata defined in generic geospatial and geodetic standards in use still support FAIR use of modern GNSS data and services across its novel user spectrum. This paper reports the results of current GNSS users’ requirements in various application sectors on the way data, metadata and services are provided. We engaged with GNSS stakeholders to validate our findings and to gain understanding on their perception of the FAIR principles. Our results confirm that offering FAIR GNSS data and services is fundamental, but for a confident use of these, there is a need to review the way metadata are offered to the community. Defining standard compliant GNSS community metadata profile and providing relevant metadata with data on-demand, the approach outlined in this paper, is a way to manage current GNSS users’ expectations and the way to improve FAIR GNSS data and service delivery for both humans and the machines.

Geometrical inspired pre-weighting enhances Markov clustering community detection in complex networks

Markov clustering is an effective unsupervised pattern recognition algorithm for data clustering in high-dimensional feature space. However, its community detection performance in complex networks has been demonstrating results far from the state of the art methods such as Infomap and Louvain. The crucial issue is to convert the unweighted network topology in a ‘smart-enough’ pre-weighted connectivity that adequately steers the stochastic flow procedure behind Markov clustering. Here we introduce a conceptual innovation and we discuss how to leverage network latent geometry notions in order to design similarity measures for pre-weighting the adjacency matrix used in Markov clustering community detection. Our results demonstrate that the proposed strategy improves Markov clustering significantly, to the extent that it is often close to the performance of current state of the art methods for community detection. These findings emerge considering both synthetic ‘realistic’ networks (with known ground-truth communities) and real networks (with community metadata), and even when the real network connectivity is corrupted by noise artificially induced by missing or spurious links. Our study enhances the generalized understanding of how network geometry plays a fundamental role in the design of algorithms based on network navigability.

Form and Genre Access to Academic Library Digital Collections

This paper provides an examination of how digital collections in academic libraries provide user access to items by form and/or genre. A review of the literature reveals that this is not an area that has received much attention, despite an increased focus on digital collections metadata and on the user experience, as well as the development of form/genre vocabularies on the national scale, such as the Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms (LCGFT). Over 100 North American digital collections websites were examined, and the results blended with data received from communications with parties responsible for digital collections metadata. The goals were to reveal possibilities for improving East Carolina University’s digital collections website, and additionally to stimulate discussion in the metadata community about best practices in form/genre access for library digital collections.

Exploring Models for Shared Identity Management at a Global Scale: The Work of the PCC Task Group on Identity Management in NACO

The paper discusses the efforts of the PCC Task Group on Identity Management in NACO to explore and advance identity management activities. The Task Group’s work serves as a recent example of how the Program for Cooperative Cataloging has engaged the metadata community to incubate practical solutions to the perennial capacity issues that libraries face in creating and maintaining authority and bibliographic data. The Task Group's multi-pronged charge compelled several outputs including research, collaboration, education, and publication. This paper outlines the Task Group's labors within the context of the decades of innovations carried out under the banner of the PCC.

Current Work in Diversity, Inclusion and Accessibility by Metadata Communities: A Working Report from the ALA/ALCTS Metadata Standards Committee

ABSTRACTThis article presents the research and initial findings by the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services and the Library Information Technology Association Metadata Standards Committee around diversity, inclusion and accessibility areas of interest and focus in the metadata field. The committee studied this topic using a survey methodology and thematic analysis technique. At the time of this writing, thirteen responses had been gathered through a purposeful sampling technique. The article presents specific topics and issues identified through the survey as well as meta-themes that appear to be common across all responses.

Book review: David Haynes, Metadata for Information Management and Retrieval: Understanding Metadata and Its Use

David Haynes published the first edition of this book in 2004. It outlined the basics of metadata, including description, standards, purposes and management. In its final chapter, he questioned whether metadata as we knew it at the time would remain, or if newer approaches to metadata such as artificial intelligence would replace human-generated records and descriptions. In the new edition, he revisited that question, answering it with an emphasis on the importance of varying metadata standards in a wide range of uses and contexts. This range makes the topic complex, as he notes: ‘At this juncture it seems that this fragmentation of metadata will continue and that a coherent metadata community is unlikely to emerge’ (p. 228). While this may sound pessimistic, he effectively uses the book to highlight the many opportunities present in current metadata use, which helps the reader understand why so many standards may be necessary: the standard, and the metadata it holds, needs to be fit for purpose.

What does it mean to adopt a metadata standard? A case study of Omeka and the Dublin Core

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to employ a case study of the Omeka content management system to demonstrate how the adoption and implementation of a metadata standard (in this case, Dublin Core) can result in contrasting rhetorical arguments regarding metadata utility, quality, and reliability. In the Omeka example, the author illustrate a conceptual disconnect in how two metadata stakeholders – standards creators and standards users – operationalize metadata quality. For standards creators such as the Dublin Core community, metadata quality involves implementing a standard properly, according to established usage principles; in contrast, for standards users like Omeka, metadata quality involves mere adoption of the standard, with little consideration of proper usage and accompanying principles.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses an approach based on rhetorical criticism. The paper aims to establish whether Omeka’s given ends (the position that Omeka claims to take regarding Dublin Core) align with Omeka’s guiding ends (Omeka’s actual argument regarding Dublin Core). To make this assessment, the paper examines both textual evidence (what Omeka says) and material-discursive evidence (what Omeka does).FindingsThe evidence shows that, while Omeka appears to argue that adopting the Dublin Core is an integral part of Omeka’s mission, the platform’s lack of support for Dublin Core implementation makes an opposing argument. Ultimately, Omeka argues that the appearance of adopting a standard is more important than its careful implementation.Originality/valueThis study contributes to our understanding of how metadata standards are understood and used in practice. The misalignment between Omeka’s position and the goals of the Dublin Core community suggests that Omeka, and some portion of its users, do not value metadata interoperability and aggregation in the same way that the Dublin Core community does. This indicates that, although certain values regarding standards adoption may be pervasive in the metadata community, these values are not equally shared amongst all stakeholders in a digital library ecosystem. The way that standards creators (Dublin Core) understand what it means to “adopt a standard” is different from the way that standards users (Omeka) understand what it means to “adopt a standard.”

Continuing Education in New Standards and Technologies for the Organization of Data and Information: A Report on the Cataloging and Metadata Professional Development Survey

This study uses data from a large original survey (nearly one thousand initial respondents) to present how the cataloging and metadata community is approaching new and emerging data standards and technologies. The data analysis demonstrates strong professional-development interest in Semantic Web and Linked Data applications. With respect to continuing education topics, Linked Data technology, BIBFRAME, and an overview of current and emerging data standards and technologies ranked high. The survey data illustrate that personal continuing education interests often varied from reported institutional needs. These results reflect the fact that library services and projects in these emerging areas have not yet progressed beyond the exploratory stage. They also suggest that cataloging and metadata professionals expect to be able to exercise a mixture of core professional skill sets including teamwork, communication, and subject analysis, and the ability to adapt and accommodate Semantic Web standards and technologies, digital libraries, and other innovations in cataloging and metadata services.

Assessment of Cataloging and Metadata Services: Introduction

Assessment is a topic of great interest to the cataloging and metadata community. In the last decade it has gotten significantly more attention, partly as a response to movements in the academic li...

Advancing Professional Learning in Libraries: An Exploratory Study of Cataloging and Metadata Professionals' Experiences and Perspectives on Continuing Education Issues

ABSTRACTBased on a set of web survey data, this study examines cataloging and metadata professionals' perspectives on issues surrounding continuing education. The results show that emerging data standards such as the Semantic Web and BIBFRAME, as well as metadata and digital library-related topics, are subject areas currently central to their professional concerns, in addition to RDA, for professional development. Topics such as ontologies, social tagging, and automatic metadata generation were rarely reported. Meaningful interactions were often found to be lacking in online education. The results provide evidence of the need to expand the pool of shared expertise to meet our collective needs for continuing education in the cataloging and metadata community.

Introduction to Intelligent Music Systems and Applications

Intelligent technologies have become an essential part of music systems and applications. This is evidenced by today's omnipresence of digital online music stores and streaming services, which rely on music recommenders, automatic playlist generators, and music browsing interfaces. A large amount of research leading to intelligent music applications deals with the extraction of musical and acoustic information directly from the audio signal using signal processing techniques. Other strategies exploit contextual aspects of music, not present in the signal, for example, community meta-data and trails of user interaction, as found, for instance, on social media platforms. In this editorial, we discuss the notion of “intelligent music system” and give an overview of the papers selected to this special issue.

Developing an automatic crawling system for populating a digital repository of professional development resources: A pilot study

ABSTRACTThis study is a part of the larger project that develops a sustainable digital repository of professional development resources on emerging data standards and technologies for data organization and management in libraries. Toward that end, the project team developed an automated workflow to crawl for, monitor, and classify relevant web objects into searchable professional development categories. In this study we present the rapid prototyping approach and the iteration and ranking processes used to develop the automatic crawling system. In its final form, the repository will constitute self-sustaining continuing education resources for the cataloging and metadata community.

A web-based IPTV content syndication system for personalized content guide

In this paper, we propose a web-based content syndication system in which users can easily choose Internet protocol television (IPTV) contents. This system generates personalized content guide to provide a list of IPTV contents with respect to users' interests and statistics information of their online social community. For this, IPTV contents and relevant metadata are collected from various sources and transformed. Then, the service and content metadata are processed by user metadata including audience measurement and community metadata. The metadata flows are separated from content flows of transport network. The implementation of IPTV content syndication system demonstrates how to arrange IPTV contents efficiently from content providers to the end user's screen. We also show that the user metadata including online community information are important for the system's performance and the user's satisfaction.

Spanning boundaries and disciplines: Linked, open and cloud-based community metadata

Metadata is an important component of trans-disciplinary research and is increasingly important in digital scholarship in which linked, open and cloud-based communities operate. These communities regularly access and create linked, open and cloud-based data and as such require metadata systems and structures that fit their unique communities. The vast and growing world of digital assets provide a tremendous resource for generating metadata through automated and crowd-sourced means. Likewise, metadata are increasingly being used to help connect disciplines and foster cross-collection discovery. The five panelists in this session represent a diverse and multidisciplinary view of metadata creation and use and the research represented in this panel includes explorations of metadata in science-based, humanities, library and cultural heritage institutions. Likewise, the research presented employs a variety of methods including computational, survey, and content analysis techniques. Each panel member therefore represents a unique view in metadata research. Drs. Erik Mitchell, Jane Greenberg, Kanti Srikantaiah, Heather Lea Moulaison and Susan Rathbun-Grubb will discuss their current research streams, speaking to the above issues via an exemplary project they have chosen to describe. Interactivity between the panelists and among the audience members will be encouraged after the panelists have presented their projects for discussion. This panel has the endorsement and the support of the Special Interest Group for Classification Research (SIG-CR).

A Sort of Knowledge Metadata Management Model in Semantic Grid Environment

As a hot spot in today's research, the grid which applies the distributed management style in the knowledge management will integrate the existing resources to the maximum. In order to change the current disorder status of knowledge resource management and get effective management and sharing of education resources, this paper takes the knowledge classification standard in LOM as the division basis of the knowledge grid metadata community, and puts forwards a sort of grid community model based on knowledge resources metadata as knowledge management framework according to the characteristics of grid management architecture. In the paper, some key issues are discussed such as the construction of grid community interior structure, the news transmission mechanism, the algorithm between communities and so on. According to the classification principles of educational information in LOM metadata as well as the grid management system structure, the concept of Grid Community based on education resource is proposed to improve the efficiency of the organization and management of educational resources in the grid.

Tracking community intelligence with Trac

We report on experiences at the Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) in customizing and using the Trac system to provide a single platform for recording, managing and tracking a wide range of community interactions. We note the essential requirement of a lightweight, easy-to-use system for recording 'community metadata' and discuss the pros and cons of using Trac in this way for day-to-day operations within SSI, and more generally as a means to record and track interactions with a wide and potentially very large community.

DataONE: Protecting the future of environmental and ecological data

AbstractThis interactive panel addresses the theme of the conference “Thriving on Diversity‐ Information Opportunities in a Pluralistic World” by exploring the role of librarians and information scientists in DataONE (Observation Network for Earth), a cyberinfrastructure project that supports the full data lifecycle for scientists in the diverse domains that are embodied in environmental and ecological science. Collaborations like this between scientists and information professionals ((see Table 1 for full list of DataONE team members), are increasingly important, which is reflected by the “Science and Metadata Community” that is forming within the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative.The research activities of environmental and ecological scientists produce diverse multi‐scale, multi‐discipline, and multi‐national observational data. These data provide insights to address new environmental, social and technological challenges caused by climate variability, altered land use, population shifts, and changes in resource availability (e.g., food, water, and oil). Therefore scientists, educators, librarians, land managers, and the public need open, persistent, and secure access to well‐described and easily discovered Earth observational data. These data are critical because they form the basis for good scientific decisions, wise management and use of resources, and informed decision‐making.Securing our global scientific knowledge base by preserving these documents and datasets requires active management of the resources and the supporting technology, as well as, an awareness of current research. DataONE is one of two National Science Foundation DataNet Partners. The DataNet Partners serve as exemplars for national and global data management and research infrastructure organizations, and also provide unique opportunities to communities of researchers to advance science and engineering research and learning. Eventually there will be five DataNet Partners.DataONE focuses on multi‐disciplinary observational data collected by biological (genome to ecosystem) and environmental (atmospheric, ecological, hydrological, and oceanographic) scientists, national and international research networks, and environmental observatories. However, the DataONE structure is designed to be domain‐agnostic, so that it can be extended to serve a broader range of science domains both directly and through interoperability with other DataNet Partners.This panel of DataONE investigators focuses on four areas related to the challenges of the preservation of digital scientific data in any setting, not just for DataONE. The panel will be facilitated to encourage the audience to provide feedback, exchange ideas, and ask questions related to the role of information science, libraries and librarians in the process of creation, discovery, access, and manipulation of electronic scientific data.

The Long-Term Ecological Research community metadata standardisation project: a progress report

We describe the process by which the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network standardised their metadata through the adoption of the Ecological Metadata Language (EML). We describe the strategies developed to improve motivation and to complement the information technology resources available at the LTER sites. EML implementation is presented as a mapping process that was accomplished per site in stages, with metadata quality ranging from 'discovery level' to rich-content level over time. As of publication, over 6000 rich-content standardised records have been published using EML, potentially enabling the goal of machine-mediated, metadata-driven data synthesis.