Reading #9

Park, J. R., & Tosaka, Y. (2010).  Metadata quality control in digital repositories and collections: Criteria, semantics, and mechanisms. Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, 48(8), 696-715.

A systematic assessment of practices and issues that affect the quality of metadata in digital repositories and collections is reviewed.  The researchers distributed a web-based survey to approximately 600 participants, mostly heads of cataloging and technical services, via mailing lists relevant to the field.  A total of 303 people completed the survey.  The results of the surveys can be categorized in the following three ways:  perceived importance of metadata quality control, criteria in use to measure metadata quality, and the utilization of quality control mechanisms in digital repositories.  Of note, the study found that metadata semantics is perceived to be less important than content standards for quality control.  This contrasts with 45% and 41% of respondents stating that semantic overlaps and ambiguities, respectively, are the two most significant factors that arise in the application of Dublin Core for their collections.  This study emphasizes the need for a strong awareness of content-based metadata quality control in collaboration with metadata guidelines to guarantee consistency in resource description within and across digital collections.