Getting Started
Areas where digitization is important:
- research methods
- dissemination
- cultural heritage
- collaboration
- preservation
Data
- Analogue data is preserved in magazines, archives, or physical collections.
- digitised data is a transformation of analogue data into digital form.
- Born-digital data has no analogue representation.
Metadata
- Descriptive metadata describes a resource for purposes.
- Structural metadata indicates how composite objects are assembled.
- Administrative metadata provides information to help manage a resource.
Collecting, Storing and Processing Metadata
- If you need to format the data and spreadsheet, use the XSLX format
to store and analyse the data.
- If you don’t need to analyse or visualise the data, use an
interoperable format such as CSV to store or share the data.
- It is helpful to annotate the data - for example with headers.
- Be aware of the problems that can occur when annotating data and metadata with, for example, dates or names.
XML
- XML is one of the most widely used metadata file formats.
- An XML document contains XML elements to structure the data.
- Attributes provide additional information about elements or groups of elements.
JSON
- (Meta)data elements are defined in key/value pairs.
- Keys are strings and appear in quotation marks.
- Values can be strings, numbers (float or integer), boolean, arrays or objects.
- Elements are separated by commas.
- Curly brackets contain objects.
- Square brackets contain arrays.
- In-line comments are not supported.
Introduction to Metadata Standards and Schemas
The terms metadata standard, metadata schema and metadata model are
often used interchangeably. They can be broadly distinguished as
follows:
- A metadata standard describes the elements or structure of metadata
and is mainly defined for technical implementation.
- A metadata schema provides a structure for metadata within a specific
content, often integrating existing metadata standards.
- A metadata model is an abstract and theoretical model that describes
metadata in its context.
Minimum Record Recommendation
The Minimum Record Recommendation is an attempt to formulate a minimum set of data fields for the publication of museum collections from the multitude and complexity of existing standards.
Metadata Encoding & Transmission Standard (METS)
METS serves as a container for structuring metadata. The metadata fields are usually integrated into the METS structure in a specific standard for the individual fields and their order. These include standards such as Cublin Core, MODS, or MARC.
Dublin Core Metadata Element Set
- The Dublin Core Standard provides a simple Set of 15 elements as well as a extend set with additional properties, classes, datatypes, and vocabulary encoding schemes.
- All fields are optional, not mandatory, can appear multiple times, and can appear in any order. Dublin Core defines the metadata fields themselves, but not the structure for them.
- The Dublin Core Standard is often used in combination with metadata terms.
Resource Description Framework (RDF)
- RDF is a standard model for data interchange on the Web.
- Statements are modeled as triples. Using URI, these triples link data (and thus all the information behind it) and form a (mathematical) graph.
XML Schema
- XML Schema is helpful to describe allowed document content. It is the “grammar” for XML.
- It uses XML syntax. If you are familiar with this language you can use it easily.
- An XML that conforms to a Schema is called valid.
- It is easy to validate the correctness of data of an XML by using a validator.
- Your Schema can be reused in other Schemas as well as you can reuse other Schemas.
- You can create your own data types derived from the standard types of xs:schema.