KBART -- Providing Standardized, Accurate and Timely Metadata: Methods and Challenges

Against the Grain, Dec 2014

By Julie Zhu, Gary Pollack, Ruth Wells, et al., Published on 12/15/14

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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 - 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)


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Julie Zhu, Gary Pollack, Ruth Wells, Matthew Llewellin. KBART -- Providing Standardized, Accurate and Timely Metadata: Methods and Challenges, Against the Grain, 2014, Volume 23, Issue 1,