Trends in Metadata Practices: A Longitudinal Study of Collection Federation Carole L. Palmer, Oksana Zavalina, & Me

1. Trends in Metadata Practices: A Longitudinal Study of Collection Federation Carole L. Palmer, Oksana Zavalina, & Megan Mustafoff Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship (CIRSS) Graduate School of Library and Information Science University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ACM IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada 22 June 2007 Institute of Museum and Library Services Digital Collections and Contenthttp://imlsdcc.grainger.uiuc.edu

2. Outline • Background on IMLS Digital Collections & Content (DCC) project • Selected results from surveys on metadata applications and supplementary data • Conclusions and future work

4. The people UIUC Library: Tim Cole, PI Amy Jackson, Project Coordinator Bill Mischo & Sarah Shreeves, co-PIs GSLIS: Carole Palmer & Mike Twidale, co-PIs Oksana Zavalina, Research Assistant Participants: IMLS NLG project developers and metadata librarians; usability testers

5. Development aim: integrated access To digital collections funded through IMLS National Leadership Grant (NLG) program and, more recently, some LSTA grants. • Collection registry • Collection-level schema developed based on DC and RSLP • Metadata repository • Harvested metadata aggregated in one location • Portal to the item-level records • Assistance for projects to develop shareable metadata.

6. Research aim: to investigate “federating” Metadata: • Range and evolution of practices and interoperabilityissues among NLG projects Tension between local practices / needs and the more global potential of digital collections • How to best represent items and collections to meet the needs of service providers and diverse user communities Collections: • Role of individual, “intentional” collection within a federation

7. Content analysis of proposals and webpages of projects Two surveys of metadata applications, 2003 and 2006 Interviews with resource developers for 45 NLG projects Analysis of item description patterns Analysis of collection description patterns / revisions Analysis of subject vocabulary in collection search logs Focus groups with resource developers Case studies of selected projects Usability testing Research approach

8. Previous reports • Collection definition and roles • Collection level description • OAI and metadata aggregation • Metadata quality • Search and discovery across collections • Metadata knowledge sharing See papers and presentations listed in Three-Year Interim Reporthttp://imlsdcc.grainger.uiuc.edu/

9. Focus of this report • Profile of federated resource • Metadata practices • Survey administered to 122 projects awarded between 1998 – 2003 2003 – 109 respondents, 76% response rate 2006 – 72 respondents, 72% response rate, with 26% panel mortality • Self report by resource developers to closed questions about materials, metadata, audience* • Supplemented by open survey questions and interview data. * p-value of chi-square .05 or below. Odds ratios measures, significant finding has confidence interval that does not contain 1.

10. Institutional breakdown, 2006

11. Range of materials represented Among 169 collections: • Images - 80% photographs/slides/negatives, posters, maps • Text - 68% - books, pamphlets, archival finding aids, newspapers, government documents • Physical Objects (29%) - museum artifacts, specimens • Sound (20%) - music, oral histories • Interactive Resources (10%) - learning objects • Moving Images (7%) - films, interviews, performances, video art • Data sets (4%) - field data, geospatial data, statistics

12. Item level subject strengths Top ranked subject headings: one kind of view • United States • people • songs with piano • trees • archeology of the United States • Work Progress Administration • cities & towns • women • archaeology • buildings • photographers • mountains • men • archaeological site • insects • bodies of water • shrubs • flowers

13. Collection level subject strengths Top ranked subject headings: better landscape view • Social Studies (80% of collections): • U.S. history • state history • world history • U.S. government • urban studies • anthropology • geography … • Arts (46% of collections): • visual arts • photography • popular culture • architecture • music • history of art ...

14. Changes in “intended” primary audience • Scholars – 88% (n=72) of collections increase from 84% in 2003 (n=94) • General public – 83% • Undergraduates – 82% • High school students – 79% increase from 59% • K-12 audience – 75%, increase from 65% But most only have anecdotal evidence of user base. Some beginning to study use.

15. New content Similar increase in all types, except interactive resources more pronounced (institutions responding in 2003 & 2006)

16. Overall use of each metadata scheme

17. ←2003 (n=94) 2006 (n=59) ↓ Multiple scheme use Surprisingly, multiple scheme use is as common in non-collaborative as in collaborative projects.

18. Changes in Dublin Core and MARC use • MARC or Dublin Core, up from 79% to 85% • Dublin Core only, up from 11% to 30% • Dublin Core alone or in combination with other schemes, up from 50% to 58% • MARC only, up from 4% to 8% • MARCalone or in combination with other schemes,down from 29% to 27%

19. Schemes used in combination with MARC

20. Changes in metadata sharing Surveys indicated: • 20% (n=66) of projects conform to OAI-PMH in 2006, up from 16% in 2003 (n=94) • Another 26% (17 projects) plan to apply OAI-PMH, including: • 6 academic libraries • 2 each - state libraries, library consortia, academic museums, and archives • 1 each – botanical garden, public library, and academic department • Most current counts: 195 collections with 36% harvested. • Items up from 298,778 to 310,448 since January 2007.

21. Notable trends • While broad range of institutions in terms of size and scope of collections, and different “cultures of description” evident in interview data, no important differences between university and non-university institutions. • Substantial decline in use of two or more schemes • Use of Dublin Core increasing, especially for single scheme use, but limitations a consistent, strong theme in interview data • Locally developed scheme use is steady overall, and up for single scheme use. • MODS application has remained minimal, but some projects are or intend to map to MODS. • 74% are or intend to map their metadata to other schemes / scheme • Percentage of records using 8 core fields down sharply, most reduction in “description” and “format” • Subject, description, format, and source fields most misused

22. Final observations Surveys provided important, but crude benchmarks. Other data sources add important details, raise many questions. Influence of content management systems – deterring use of MODS and TEI encoding decisions - (interviews) Need models for description of newer, more complex and interactive objects, such as works of art / art “events” - (case study) Fundamental questions remain: What is lost or changed in the process of federating “collections” or items accumulated for a purpose -- to “explore” “demonstrate” “provide insight into” … ? - (collection descriptions) How build and retain “contextual mass” (Palmer, 2004), in light of 88% scholarly audience

23. Acknowledgements • This research has been funded by IMLS, NLG Research and Demonstration grant LG-02-02-0281 • We wish to acknowledge the important contributions of our team members on the DCC project, especially: • Tim Cole and Amy Jackson

24. Questions and comments always welcome Carole L. Palmer clpalmer@uiuc.edu Oksana Zavalina zavalina@uiuc.edu Megan Mustafoff mustafof@uiuc.edu Institute of Museum and Library Services Digital Collections and Contenthttp://imlsdcc.grainger.uiuc.edu

25. END

26. Mapping to other metadata schemes

27. Mapping, schemes, and new content, 2006

28. http://cirss.lis.uiuc.edu/