Metadata Standards for Museum Cataloguing
Introduction to Metadata Standards for Museum Cataloguing
Metadata Standards for Managing and Documenting Museum Collections
• Museum Collections Management/Documentation Standards
• Collections Description Standards
• Data Models for Museum Information
• Museum Metadata Crosswalks
Other Metadata Standards useful to Museums
• General Metadata Standards for Resource Discovery
• Multimedia Metadata Standards
• Metadata Standards for Digital Preservation
• Intellectual Property Rights and Electronic Commerce Standards
• Educational Metadata Standards
• Standards for Encoding Metadata
• Related Reading and Resources
Introduction to Metadata Standards for Museum Cataloguing
Museums create collections management or catalogue records to
manage and describe both:
- physical collections
- digital collections
Standards for the creation and exchange of data about objects in
museum collections (defining the categories of information to be
recorded) are sometimes called data structure standards.
Similar data about digital "information objects" (web
pages, digital images, etc.) is usually referred to as "metadata"
(literally "data about data"). However, the term "metadata" is
also sometimes used to refer to data about non-digital
objects such as physical objects in museum collections. Therefore,
museum collections management records (whether paper-based or
automated) would be considered by some to be "metadata" about
the collection.
As museums increasingly manage data about both their digital
and their physical collections, the lines between traditional
data structure standards and metadata standards have become somewhat
blurred, and there is no clear line between "data" and "metadata".
A digital image could have associated "metadata" such as a textual
description of the subject of the image. However, this "metadata"
could also be considered "data" in its own right, possibly with
its own corresponding metadata (for example, the author or date
of the textual description).
A museum with a collection of digital images of the objects
in its collection may benefit from the creation of metadata about
both the digital images and the physical collection.
A digital image could have many kinds of associated metadata,
which could:
- help the museum manage and administer its collection of digital
images (metadata about the copyright status of the images, etc.)
- describe the image to enable it to be found in a search or
differentiated from other images (metadata describing the content
of the image, etc.)
- help with the maintenance of the digital image system (metadata
about the digitization date, file format, etc.)
- track use or changes to the information object (metadata about
colour adjustments made to a digital image, etc.)
For further information on metadata for digital images, see Multimedia
Metadata Standards.
Information about the physical objects in the collection (the
collections management or catalogue record) is also sometimes
defined as metadata. This metadata could:
- be used for collections management (metadata about the physical
location of the object, the availability of an object for loan,
conservation treatments, etc.)
- describe or identify museum objects for database searching
or security purposes (metadata about the artist or title of
the work, a physical description of the object, etc.)
- document the use of the object by the museum (metadata about
exhibitions in which the object has been used, etc.)
For further information on metadata standards for documenting or
managing museum objects, see Museum
Collections Management/Documentation Standards or Collections
Description Standards.
Metadata issues can become very complex as 'surrogates' of the
information object are produced - modified versions of images,
copies or reproductions of originals, and new versions of documents
all have associated (and inter-related) metadata. Each of these
versions or copies may have associated dates, use restrictions,
associated people, and other metadata that must be managed.
There are also various levels of granularity of metadata. For
example, there can be metadata (or data):
- about individual objects in a museum's collection (for example,
a record in a collections management database),
- describing the museum's collection in more general terms (for
example, a "collection-level description" in an online directory
of museums
- about a virtual exhibit,
- about the individual images featured in that exhibit.
The metadata at these various levels of granularity may be linked
so that users can navigate between them.
Metadata can be stored separately from the information object,
or can be embedded within the information object.
- In the case of physical museum objects, the "metadata" would
be stored separately, in a database.
- For digitized images, some metadata may be stored in a database,
while other metadata may be stored in a special header that
becomes part of the image file during the digitization process.
- For Web sites, metadata is often embedded in the HTML
header at the top of the page; search engines sometimes use
this embedded metadata to index the site. Sometimes only a "link
tag" is stored in the HTML header; this link tag points to metadata
that is stored in a separate file. Metadata describing Web sites
can also be stored in a database to be used in a local application.
For further information on embedding metadata within digital resources,
see Standards
for Encoding Metadata.
Metadata element sets are
sometimes called schemas. It
is important to use existing metadata element sets (schemas) wherever
possible, to ensure interoperability. However, within any given
metadata application, it may be necessary to combine more than
one existing metadata schema, or to extend an existing metadata
schema with local elements. A particular metadata application
that uses more than one metadata element set (possibly including
locally defined sets) is sometimes referred to as an application
profile. For further information on the use of application
profiles, see Standards
for Encoding Metadata.
Several tools have been created to assist with the creation
of metadata:
- DC-dot
DC-dot will automatically generate Dublin
Core metadata for any web page. It will generate the metadata
either as HTML
metatags, or as RDF
/ XML.
This metadata can be embedded in the header of a Web page to
assist with resource discovery.
- CHIN
MetaCollector (CHIN Members access only).
CHIN has built a cataloging tool, the MetaCollector,
that enables museums to create metadata easily. The MetaCollector
is an online form that, once completed, generates HTML metadata.
This metadata is sent back to the museums to be embedded in
the HTML header of their Web pages. CHIN also harvests the metadata
and loads it into a database for local searching within the
CHIN Learning with Museums product.
Other metadata tools
and software are also available from the Dublin Core site.
For examples of metadata-related projects and implementations,
see Standards Research and Implementation
Projects
The following information outlines the most important metadata
or data structure standards used by museums. These standards in
this section are divided into categories based on the primary
function they are intended to perform.