A study of metadata standards

Introduction

With the automation of information systems and with the advent of digital libraries, norms, standards and techniques of library studies have been widely discussed, analyzed, reevaluated and reorganized. This paper aims to offer functional requirements, intrinsic attributes and metadata elements requirements and their status in the format of metadata standards. In the present study, 20 metadata standards are chosen which are functional across various metadata harvesting service providers, museums, archives and other open access communities. The findings revealed that various metadata standards have been designed to serve different purposes like describing text, image, video, manuscripts, etc. For serving these purposes, it consists of different elements having varying status in each metadata standard.

In this era of rapid proliferation of electronic resources, there exists unpredictability in terms of the availability, accessibility and the authenticity of digital objects. Many search mechanisms retrieve a plethora of information resources, but majority are less effective and lack comprehensiveness. In the digital environment new methodologies of information management and access coupled with the advancements in digital information systems have transformed information management. Metadata, the systematic arrangement of data elements helps in the identification and location of information resources thereby facilitating improved access to them.

Metadata standards

Metadata is represented in the form of bibliographic elements and the organization of these elements in a systematic format is called metadata standard. The metadata standard is the set of metadata elements and rules for their use that have been defined for a particular purpose. In common usage, the terms scheme, schema and standard are used interchangeably.

A metadata scheme is the set of descriptor types available to be applied to information. Numerous standard schemes have been developed to address specific information use and management needs. These standards have emerged from the needs of specific interest groups to standardize how they classify information. Many different metadata schemes are being developed in a variety of user environments and disciplines.

Metadata interoperability

Interoperability is the ability of systems, services and organizations to work together and exchange information and use the exchanged information without special effort on either system.

From a methodological point of view, implementing interoperability may be considered at different levels of operation: schema level, record level and repository level:

- Schema level ....