Designing workflows for quality assured metadata

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Designing workflows forquality assured metadata

• Jane Barton John RobertsonCentre for Digital
  Library ResearchUniversity of Strathclyde

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Overview

• The Metadata Workflow Investigation
• Metadata quality
• Metadata workflow
• Factors influencing quality and workflow
• Issues to resolve
• The way forward?

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The Metadata Workflow Investigation

• supporting study for X4L and FAIR programmes
• focus on metadata creation within UK LORs and IRs
• arises from issues identified by early
  implementers
• Primary aim is to develop a good understanding
  of
• the factors which influence both metadata
  qualityand the workflow used to create it
• the context within which recommendationsare to
  be made

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Metadata quality why bother?

• Quality is defined by its absence
• errors, omissions and ambiguities
• recall and precision
• Metadata quality is essential for
• functionality
• interoperability
• participation in aggregated services
• Enthusiasm, expectation and critical mass

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Defining metadata quality

• Quality is fitness for purpose
• Aspects of metadata quality
• structure, semantics and syntax
• metadata metrics
• Metadata requirements
• local needs
• community-level requirements
• cost-benefit and compromise

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Managing metadata quality

• Metadata quality in practice
• contextual factors determine actual quality
• immediate and long-term priorities
• The quality cycle
• Quality assurance quality by design
• elements, records, repositories, aggregations
• tools and techniques
• embedding quality assurance in metadatacreation
  processes - workflow

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Metadata workflow why bother?

• Metadata for libraries
• well-defined purpose, stable context
• workflow embedded and tightly controlled
• community-wide approach to optimise quality
• Metadata for repositories
• poorly defined and diverse purpose, evolving
  context
• workflow distributed, collaborative or both
• potential of community-wide approach notfully
  exploited

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Designing metadata workflow

• Determine purpose of metadata
• Determine level of quality required
• Determine level of quality that can be achieved
• Design and implement workflow
• Refine workflow
• Review
• Opportunities for refinement
• arise from both local and wider context
• produce both direct and indirectimprovements in
  quality

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Factors influencing metadata quality

• What is the repository for, locally and within
  the wider context? Does this give rise to any
  conflicts?
• What type of objects will the repository contain?
  How will they be used? And by whom?
• What functionality is required locally? How will
  it be interfaced? What entry points will be used?
• What is required for interoperability? Are
  requirements formal or informal, direct or
  indirect?
• Will access restrictions be imposed locally?And
  in the wider context?
• Will metadata be meaningful withinaggregations
  of various kinds?

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Factors influencing workflow design

• What resources are available locally? Who will be
  involved? What skills do they have?
• How can these resources be used to best effect?
• Are resources available within the wider
  community? Does their use require compromises to
  be made, and if so, is it worth it?
• Are resources sufficient to produce the required
  metadata quality, and if not, what are the
  priorities?
• What level of commitment exists locallyand in
  the wider community?

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A typology of factors

• Repository-level factors
• Does the repository have a subject specialism? Is
  it required to interoperate with the local VLE?
• Object-level factors
• Can objects be repurposed? Is their use
  restricted?
• Metadata-level factors
• Does participation in the wider community impose
  specific requirements? Is training available?
• Local factors
• Is there a strategic commitment to the repository?

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Issues to resolve

• Repository-level issues
• need a better understanding of what an individual
  repository is for, both locally and as part of a
  wider system of repositories and services
• Object-level issues
• need a better understanding of how objects are
  created, used, repurposed, managed
• Metadata-level issues
• need to integrate and optimise metadatacreation,
  enhancement and QA processes throughout the wider
  system

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The way forward?