KBART -- Providing Standardized, Accurate and Timely Metadata: Methods and Challenges
KBART -- Providing Standardized, Accurate and Timely Metadata: Methods and Challenges
Julie Zhu 0 1 2
Cengage Learning 0 1 2
0 1 2
Taylor 0 1 2
Francis 0 1 2
<> 0 1 2
Royal Society Publishing 0 1 2
0 1 2
0 American Institute of Physics
1 by Julie Zhu, Sr. Project Coordinator, Online Service Division, American Institute of Physics
2 and Ruth Wells, Journals Project Manager, IT Department , Taylor & Francis
Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/atg Part of the Library and Information Science Commons Recommended Citation
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KBART – Providing Standardized, Accurate and Timely
Metadata: Methods and Challenges
and Gary Pollack (VP Customer-Partner Solutions, Cengage Learning | Gale) <>
Pderstand that metadata is an increasingly
ublishers, librarians, and educators
unimportant aspect of resource discovery
and use. We all know that good metadata or,
better yet, standards-based metadata facilitates
interoperability of services provided by our
knowledge-base and learning management
systems; ultimately connecting the communities of
end users we serve to relevant and appropriate
digital content.
In the age of mostly print publications,
librarians were often responsible for
creating cataloging and metadata information for
journals and other publications subscribed by
libraries. Now in the age of electronic
publications, when more and more libraries are shifting
to online-only subscription models and when
many libraries are facing budget and staff
shortages, libraries and library service providers are
calling upon the content providers to provide
publication metadata in a standardized,
accurate, and timely way.
Several years ago some service providers
and aggregators, like Serials Solutions, Ex
Libris, EBSCO, started asking publishers and
content hosting platforms to provide
publications titles lists. Serials Solutions published
a format for the metadata needed for serials
and monographs, while other library service
providers did not provide specifications. Some
publishers started sending serials titles lists to
these requesting library service providers via
email, FTP, or Websites. The 16 standardized
fields for serial titles specified in KBART
Phase 1 Recommendations in many ways
help the content providers, who do not have
to modify the titles lists for different library
service providers’ knowledge bases.
While publishers fully understand the
benefits of providing standardized, accurate,
and timely metadata, they face practical
challenges. Smaller publishers with only dozens
of serial titles may produce and update their
title lists in a manual or semi-automated
process. This process will require designated
human resources to periodically maintain and
update the metadata. While many libraries are
facing budget and staff shortages, publishers
also experience staff shortages and competing
projects. Providing metadata may not be at the
top of some publishers’ lists.
Larger publishers, hosting platforms, and
aggregators cannot rely on manual or
semiautomated processes. When hundreds or
thousands of titles are involved, with backfile
content sometimes added for some titles, and
with frequent title changes, they have to use
some automated processes. While they may
Against the Grain / February 2011
have more resources, they also face more
competing projects and priorities. It is highly
likely that the 16 required metadata fields are
spread over multiple databases or systems, and
it is also likely that metadata are not always
accurate and up-to-date in these systems. To
clean up legacy data and pull together
metadata, just for serial titles, could
become a major project for
publishers.
What may not be obvious
to librarians and educators are
the vast sums of money and time
that publishers must spend on systems
with flexible metadata schemas,
metadata schema views, metadata policies and
processes, quality controls, collaborative
metadata editing and authoring tools, and
user-friendly interface components. While
sometimes referred to as editorial workflow
systems, these applications are increasingly
being re-factored to deal with new requirements,
whether internally driven or market driven,
whether to meet a new or emerging standard
or to accommodate a new type of digital
asset (e.g., a “tweet”). In any case the system
requires modification, and in order for that to
take place requirements must be articulated,
a project must be approved, a team must be
formed, staff must be trained, etc.
The library community has raised more
requests to publishers. Consortia would like to
have serial titles customized for each
consortium. Libraries would like to have metadata for
monographs — i.e., online books and
conference proceedings. Each request creates a new
challenge for publishers. A publisher often
serves dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of
consortia. Even if publishers will only provide
customized serial title lists for major
consortia, they will need to maintain multiple lists
and potentially i (...truncated)