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Digital Collections Metadata

General Information

Description

Encompasses the descriptive, structural, and administrative metadata describing the locally digitized collections at the UW-Madison Libraries. The digital collections are made available to the public and include digitized texts, metadata records and various multimedia in the form of images, video and audio files.

Purpose

This data is used for management of digital collections so that the digitized materials can be made available in the UW-Madison Libraries coordinated discovery interface, and preserved for future generations.

Quick Facts

Single copy approx. 30Tb

Data Classifications

Campus

• Public: Digital collection metadata is made available for use by the public to support pedagogy and research.

Library

• Archival This data set serves as a high quality archival copy of metadata describing digitized library content.
• Content This data set includes metadata that itself is the primary content of a digitized collection.
• Descriptive Digital collection metadata provides description of creative works within the UW digital collections, so that library patrons and the public can search for content of interest to their pedagogy and research.
• Technical Technical information in the digital collections metadata records details about the digitized content (e.g., format, size) as well as preservation information and occasionally access restrictions for some materials.

Data Contacts

Data Owner/Trustee

Lee Konrad lee.konrad@wisc.edu

Data Steward

Peter Gorman peter.gorman@wisc.edu

Data Steward

Scott Prater scott.prater@wisc.edu

Data Custodian

Library Technology Group (LTG)

Data Custodian

Shared Development Group (SDG)

Data Custodian

UW Digital Collections Center (UWDCC)

Data Manager

Steven Dast steven.dast@wisc.edu

Data Architect/Modeler

Peter Gorman peter.gorman@wisc.edu

Data Architect/Modeler

Scott Prater scott.prater@wisc.edu

Data Consumer

Library users

Risk Assessment

Technical Details

Specifications

Descriptive metadata: Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS); Text Encoding Initiative (TEI)

Administrative metadata: PREMIS Data Dictionary for Preservation Metadata

Structural metadata: Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS); Text Encoding Initiative (TEI)

Technical metadata: NISO Data Dictionary Technical Metadata for Digital Still Images (MIX); AES standard for audio metadata (AES)

Geographic metadata: Cadastral Data Content Standard for the National Spatial Data Infrastructure; Geography Markup Language (GML); Keyhole Markup Language (KML)

Correctness

Metadata records in this data set must validate against the schemas listed in the technical specification for structural correctness. The UW Digital Collections Center staff manage QA processes in coordination with content providers, which includes other staff within the libraries as well as research partners at UW-Madison and beyond.

Representative Record

The authoritative copy of this data set resides in a Fedora digital collections repository. The repository is managed by a combination of library staff from UWDCC and the Libraries' Shared Development Group and Library Technology Group. This data has no retention schedule because it is digitized for perpetual use and preservation purposes.

Dependencies

Technical metadata is typically derived from digitization process of analogue materials, including, but not limited to, books or other items from the UW-Madison Libraries collections or researchers' personal materials, such as research photograph collections. Structural and administrative metadata is created by UWDCC staff. Descriptive and geographical metadata are created both by UWDCC staff and external partners.

Downstream uses include packaging and ingest for the Libraries' preservation system; processing descriptive metadata to be made available for harvesting via the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH); and indexing by the Libraries' Coordinated Discovery application.

Access & Use

Delivery Modalities

Data is delivered to users for consumptive use in teaching and research via the UW-Madison Libraries search interface. Indexing processes extract the various kinds of metadata from the Fedora repository system in which it is stored. Users may also download metadata and content files through the search interface, which acts as a proxy to the repository.

Lifecycle

Digital collections data is created through UWDC digitization projects. These are often carried out with a sponsoring librarian or researcher from UW-Madison. Data is retained for permanent preservation and archiving and typically made available for open access use. Items and metadata are deaccessioned only in rare cases.

Disposition

Digital collections data is stored in the Fedora repository system, hosted within the UW-Madison Libraries Linux computing infrastructure. The computing infrastructure meets the requirements for security, uptime and backup/recovery of production systems within the server infrastructure hosted by the UW-Madison Department of Information Technology (DoIT).

Relevant Processes

Data is obtained through digitization processes in coordination with a sponsoring librarian or researcher. UWDC staff are responsible for digitization of materials and the technical, administrative and preservation metadata. The sponsors of a given project are responsible for a given collection's or project's descriptive metadata. Projects are approved by a UWDC steering council. Suggestions for correcting or augmenting metadata (e.g. from public users) are mediated by UWDCC staff and are implemented by UWDCC if deemed appropriate.

Constraints

Most metadata for digital collections has no restrictions on its use. The data is intended to support open access to digitized content by the general public. Descriptive metadata is placed in the Public Domain in order that it may be harvested and reused by the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA).