Christina Magnifico LI884XI: Advanced Metadata Applications Local Metadata Scheme for Educational Portfolio

Local Metadata Scheme for Educational Portfolio

Introduction: This report summarizes and describes the process of creation that I underwent in order to create a local metadata scheme for five of the resources from my educational portfolio. The basic template I used came from Professor Messinas initial example, but I did add a few local elements of my own. The local elements used in the scheme are: Title, Author, Group Member, Date Due, Date Submitted, Table of Contents, Possible Points, Points Received, Grade Received, Instructor, Instructor Comments, Abstract, Subject, Keywords, Project Title, Course Title, Course Number, Copyright, Resource Type, Digital Format, Location, Language, and Identifier. I decided on these local elements, based on evaluating the type of information I could find within the Blackboard Learning Environment and the resource itself. I also considered the types of queries I would consider using when trying to retrieve a resource from a database, and this influenced the local elements I decided to use. The first resource I created a record for was a review of the literature titled, The Effects of the Internet and Open Access on the Usage of Grey Literature: A Review of the Literature. This resource was created with other SLIM students as a final project for LI802XS, Research In Library and Information Science. The second resource was a recently created resource titled, Collection Management Policy Analysis Report: A. R. Dykes Health Sciences Library. This resource was an individual assignment for LI855XS, utilizing a report format that included a table of contents. The third resource was part of a larger literature review assignment. This resource was a simple, annotated list of themes created for LI804XS. The fourth education resource was a final literature review created for LI804XS titled,

Christina Magnifico LI884XI: Advanced Metadata Applications Local Metadata Scheme for Educational Portfolio

The Use of Medical Information Retrieval Systems. This was an individual assignment, which was turned in at the culmination of the class. The last resource was a newsletter titled Intellectual Freedom Newsletter: Information Ethics Case 2.15. This assignment was the first group assignment I completed in SLIM, it was for Foundations of Library and Information Science LI801XS. Discussion: This assignment did not take as long to create as some of the previous records. I attributed this to the fact that I was familiar with these resources, thus streamlining the record creation process. Though I tried to use every local element for each resource, there were a few elements that were not utilized each time. For example, Table of Contents was only used once; I did not have a table of contents associated with any of my other resources. Another element that was only utilized twice was the Group Member element, since I only used two group assignments as resources. As for the elements that were utilized for each record-- Title, Author, Date Due, Date Submitted, Possible Points, Points Received, Grade Received, Instructor, Instructor Comments, Abstract, Subject, Keywords, Project Title, Course Title, Course Number, Copyright, Resource Type, Digital Format, Location, Language, and Identifieralmost all of them could be mapped to a DC Term. The Title element was mapped to DC, as each resource had already been labeled with an appropriate title. I aligned my titles with APA formatting and did not capitalize anything after the first word, save for proper nouns. The Author element (Creator in Dublin Core, DC) was easily

Christina Magnifico LI884XI: Advanced Metadata Applications Local Metadata Scheme for Educational Portfolio

filled with my name, even though some of the assignments were group assignments. I chose to input my name in the author field, since the scheme was local and something only I would be using for information retrieval. The Group Member element was mapped to the DC element Contributor, and even though I did not create a separate field for each group member in this assignment, I made an implementation note suggesting that each group member be inputted into individual fields. The Date Due and Date Submitted elements were simply crosswalked to the Date element in DC. Since I only had one resource with a table of contents, this field was only utilized within this local scheme once. The Table of Contents element crosswalks to the tableOfContents element in Dublin Core, and I used the format I had seen on multiple DC technical websites. Almost all of my resources contained enough information to fill the Abstract element, a field that crosswalks to the Description Dublin Core element. The most difficult element (for me), was the Subject element, especially since I am not use to the LCSH controlled vocabulary. This did take more time than any of the other elements, and I am still second guessing myself as far as my decision to use the terms I included. Other local elements that crosswalk to the DC Description element included the Keywords element and Location. Im not sure that I utilized Location correctly, since each of the resources uses a URI for this particular element. Project Title crosswalks to isPartOf, and I second guessed my decision to crosswalk Course Title and Course Number to the DC Identifier element instead of lumping all three of these together. The Copyright local element crosswalks to the DC Rights element, though for this assignment I just used the Creative Commons License as an umbrella copyright statement for each of the resources. For Resource Type, the crosswalk to DC Type is a natural fit; and I used DCMIType as the encoding scheme. The Digital Format utilizes the IMT encoding scheme and can be crosswalked to the DC Format element. The Language element is encoded in ISO 639,

Christina Magnifico LI884XI: Advanced Metadata Applications Local Metadata Scheme for Educational Portfolio

crosswalks to the DC Language element and all of the resources use en as the language. The last local element that can be crosswalked to Dublin Core was the Identifier element. This is the same in both the local scheme and DC, and utilizes a URI for the encoding scheme. I was unable to crosswalk Possible Points, Points Received, Grade Received, Instructor, and Instructor Comments. These could fall under the DC Description element, but I did not feel that this was the best use of the element. Summary and Conclusion: I appreciated this assignment, especially since I will be taking Database Design next semester. The assignment was sufficiently challenging and I enjoyed creating my own local scheme for resources I was familiar with. If I am ever charge with creating a digital collection from scratch, I will be able to think back to this assignment and possibly glean some of the information from my scheme in order to create a scheme I could utilize for a more complex database/collection. The initial template that Professor Messina provided was a great stepping-stone when creating the initial scheme for this assignment. There were elements, such as Instructor Comments, that I would not have considered using if Professor Messina had not included them in her assignment template. Overall I enjoyed this assignment and look forward to creating schemes that utilize elements I can create myself. Being able to convert the information found within resources into a searchable element within a collection will come in quite handy in the future!