Metadata for Digital Collections

Metadata creation and enhancement is a partnership between Bibliographic Services and McCain Library. Special Collections librarians and Digital Collections staff select and digitize materials from the Special Collection, Mississippiana, and de Grummond Children's Literature Collection. Basic metadata creation (administrative, descriptive, and technical) occurs during the digitization process, and most records are made available for public view and use without delay. Bibliographic Services is responsible for enhancement of selected basic metadata, focusing on title, description, creator names,dates, subjects, and geographic locations.

University Libraries uses CONTENTdm to organize, manage, and display its Digital Collections. Multiple collections with more than 10,000 items are available for the use of researchers. A wiki is used to keep a master log of materials ready for metadata enhancement. Digital Collections staff members add information in the wiki when new materials are added to CONTENTdm. When Bibliographic Services completes the enhancement of metadata for collection materials, that information is also added to the wiki.

The chart below is updated monthly to show the status of metadata enhancement of digitized materials.

Metadata Enhancement

(Last Update: May 23, 2013)

	Coll Size	Enhanced	Remaining	Complete
AAEC Editorial Cartoons	1,924	1,511	413	78.53%
Civil Rights in Mississippi Digital Archive	1,639	1,529	110	93.29%
de Grummond Children's Books	189	151	38	79.89%
de Grummond Children's Literature	743	0	743
Gene Taylor Papers
H.A. and Margaret Rey	445	0	445
Historical Manuscripts & Photos	3631	36	3595	0.99%
Kate Greenaway Papers	343	0	343
McLoughlin Bros. Papers	838	0	838
Maps	80	31	49	38.75%
Mississippiana	10	2	8	20.0%
Oral History	423	0	423
Rare Books	390	10	380	2.56%
Robert Waller Photographs	1780	0	1780
S.G. Thigpen Papers	67	0	67
Southern Miss History	1,813	629	1,184	34.71%
USM Art Museum	206	206	0	100%
Finding Aids	65		65
Totals	13,681	4,065	9,625	29.65%

Best Practices for Metadata Entry

A locally developed best practices document guides the entry of metadata into 43 fields based on an extended Dublin Core set of elements. Metadata Best Practices for Southern Miss Digital Collections in its current form was developed and expanded from an earlier document. It is kept current to reflect our practices and national standards of metadata entry. Periodic meetings of Bibliographic Services and Digital Collections personnel for discussion of changes to the metadata fields are carried out. Changes to the document and our entry standards are made in the interest of providing the best possible searching results to users of the digital files.

 

Linda Ginn, March 1, 2012