Course Modules

• 01 - Introduction
•  
• A Look at Sharing
  • 02 - The Current Sharing Environment
  • 03 - Aggregators
  •  
• Defining Shareable Metadata
  • 04 - Foundations
  • 05 - Content
  • 06 - Coherence
  • 07 - Context
  • 08 - Activity 1
  • 09 - Communication
  • 10 - Consistency
  • 11 - Conformance to Standards
  • 12 - Activity 2
  •  
• Shareable Metadata in Practice
  • 13 - Crosswalking
  • 14 - Workflow
  •  
• 15 - Looking Ahead

Metadata for You & Me - Introduction

Module Content

• Screencast
• Powerpoint Slides and Other Resources
• Module Text

Screencast

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Powerpoint Slides and Other Resources

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Module Text

1. About this course

The Metadata for You and Me course was designed by Jenn Riley, Sarah Shreeves, and Richard Urban and was inspired by our experiences within the context of the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (http://www.openarchives.org/pmh/) as well as other collaborative metadata aggregations such as the Collaborative Digitization Program (http://www.cdpheritage.org/).

While many of us pay careful attention to the metadata we create and use within our own institutions, we don't always think about what that metadata might look like and how useful it might be outside those walls (or web sites). As data sharing becomes more and more a part of our everyday world in aggregations like OAIster, OpenWorldCat and Google Book Search (see http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC01002991 as an example), mash-ups, etc., we need to make the metadata we're sharing more understandable, usable, and machine-processable. This course is designed to help you do that.

2. Scope of the course

This course is divided into the following modules:

• A Look at Sharing (Week 1)
  This module examines the basic question of why we share metadata, gives examples of different aggregations, and covers some of the challenges for metadata providers, users, and aggregators in the metadata sharing landscape.
  

• Defining Shareable Metadata (Weeks 2, 3, and 4)
  This module contains the meat of the course. We define and cover some of the characteristics of shareable metadata, and discuss how they apply to some specific elements. Expect lots of activities and discussion in this portion of the course.
  

• Shareable Metadata in Practice (Week 5)
  This module covers practical issues for your home environments such as different protocols for sharing metadata, how to include shareable metadata considerations into your workflows, and crosswalking between different metadata formats.
  

• Looking Forward (Week 5)
  The last module looks at emerging trends in sharing, including use of collection descriptions, advanced services for aggregators, and sharing content.

3. What we won't cover

The Metadata for You and Me course assumes a minimal level of familiarity with metadata and/or cataloging standards. It is not a 'how to do metadata' course. We will mention and use examples of several different metadata standards, but will not go into any detail of how to implement these locally. This is also not an XML course, though you will see examples in XML as well as a minimum level of discussion of typical problems with XML files. This is also not a course that covers the technical issues of how to share metadata. For example, we do not cover how to set up an Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI PMH) data provider.

4. Overall objectives for the course

What we hope you come away with at the end of the course is:

• An understanding of the need for interoperable or shareable metadata;

• Predict the impact that your metadata decisions have on larger aggregations;

• An understanding of key components of shareable metadata;

• The ability to perform critical analyses of the shareability of your own metadata;

• Identification of small and large steps that will make your own metadata more shareable; and

• The ability to produce metadata that is more useful in a shared context.

5. Expectations for participants

We expect that you will:

• Read the course content;

• Participate actively on the bulletin board;

• Provide 10 sample metadata records from your institution;

• Complete activities and post them to the bulletin board; and

• Ask questions!

6. What you can expect of the instructors

You can expect your instructors to:

• Provide prompt responses to questions;

• Lead constructive discussion of shareability issues;

• Provide useful feedback on activities; and

• Provide references to further readings or other resources when they can't answer a question directly.

7. Next steps

Let's move on to Activity 1, introducing yourself. Include your name, your position and institution, why you are interested in the idea of shareable metadata, and what you hope to get out of the course.

We'd also like you to upload some sample records from your institution, so that both you and the instructors can review them throughout the course as we learn more about the principles of shareable metadata. You'll post these to the "MYM Classroom Repository," which appears in this Module after Activity 1.

Next module: A Look at Sharing: The Current Sharing Environment

Metadata for You & Me is a collaboration between the University of Illinois Library and Indiana University.
This project is made possible by a grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) through the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program.