Metadata: Making Cultural Heritage Accessible and Visible – An Interview
The complex world of metadata is one of the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek’s central fields of work and an area of work in which the processes and developments are virtually “invisible” to outsiders. In the process, the quality of the metadata is crucial to making the digitised products from archives, libraries, media libraries and museums not only “accessible, but also visible” to users. Together with cultural and scientific institutions, the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek is working on applying, adapting and further developing metadata standards to process and network the databases in a sustainable way.
“What role does metadata play in an interconnected world?” is also one of the questions being addressed at the international conference “Shaping Access! More Responsibility for Cultural Heritage” on 5th/6th November in the Altonaer Museum in Hamburg. Under the motto “Future Strategies”, the technical, participatory and legal issues and concepts which are going to shape the future of digitising cultural heritage will be discussed.
Francesca Schulze, responsible for the department of metadata and metadata development at the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek, will give the lecture “Data Quality: A Success Factor for Accessing German Cultural Heritage – A Look Behind the Scenes of the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek”. In the run-up to her lecture, we spoke with her about the role metadata plays in making cultural heritage accessible, the difficulties and challenges faced in this field of work and how people actually become metadata experts.
The Interview
This year’s “Shaping Access!” conference is devoted to future strategies for making cultural heritage digitally accessible and the challenges cultural and research institutions face in the process. What role does metadata play within this context?
FS: “Metadata – and, above all, qualitatively good metadata – is indispensable to the world of digital cultural and scientific heritage. It ensures that the collections owned by archives, libraries, museums, media libraries, institutions for the preservation of historical monuments and research institutes are not just reliably accessible, but can also be made visible. The challenges involved include continuous developments within the field of “linked data” and the various user expectations which go far beyond the scope of finding, identifying and evaluating search results.”
You are giving a lecture on metadata quality as part of the conference programme: what do you convey in it? What is the purpose of your lecture?
FS: “I want to convey that we should regard metadata quality as a mutual effort which starts with indexing and digitising cultural assets. Good metadata is the only thing which can make users happy with the products offering access to digital cultural and scientific heritage.
I will present what metadata quality is from the perspective of the experts within the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek (DDB) and Europeana networks and the weight the subject carries in light of the various influential factors and user groups. In order to do this, I will illustrate the different ways of improving the quality of the metadata throughout the process chain, from the institution supplying the data and the publications in portals like DDB and Europeana through to high-quality “linked data”.”
What is the biggest challenge or difficulty faced when working with metadata?
FS: “This would mainly be the heterogeneity of the metadata we receive, which we have to convert into a common metadata format. This is because of the fact that each institution has different practices for indexing cultural artefacts and works with different software and database systems for cataloguing, digitisation and metadata management. For example, some institutions use inter-institutional standards when indexing, structuring and exporting metadata, but others don’t.
Another challenge is the multi-disciplinary teamwork within the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek in the field of metadata. It is often necessary to first come to a mutual understanding of what we are depicting with metadata and how.
For instance, archivists have a different approach than librarians or documentalists. Furthermore, we give our engineers data-related requirements but they have their own technical jargon. On the other hand, communication with the institutions is very important and we have already achieved a lot due to our multi-disciplinary teamwork within the field of metadata.”
What are the things which will require the most attention from us in the future with regard to metadata? What developments are you following with anticipation?
FS: “This would mainly be the developments within the field of Linked Data and Semantic Web. Even though in the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek we are already showing what is possible when we link together data from different sources (e.g. on the biographical pages: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe), the potential has nowhere near been exhausted. Persistent identifiers play a prominent role in this process, identifying objects from cultural and scientific institutions in a clear way worldwide and therefore permanently and reliably showing them in the DDB.
It is also important for the institutional data to contain more identifiers from cooperatively maintained standard data and vocabulary. As a consequence, we are able to facilitate the traceability and inter-institutional linking of the databases. One approach, for example, is to increasingly introduce the Integrated Authority File beyond the limits of the library. There are a few things underway within this field at the moment.”
And finally: How do people actually become metadata experts?
FS: “I studied “Media and Information” at the University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg. At the Deutsches Historisches Institut in Moscow, as soon as I finished studying, I was given the opportunity to assist in the construction of the library and the institute’s online assets. But I have also worked in the classic fields of media and information indexing.
The role metadata and standards play in the world of making cultural heritage digitally accessible really dawned on me when I was working as a data coordinator on the “European Film Gateway” (EFG) at the Deutsches Filminstitut – DIF e.V.. Among other things, I was responsible for formulating so-called “mapping rules”, so that the data supply from the film archives could be converted into the standard EFG metadata format and film-related contents presented in the EFG portal. I’m doing something similar at the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek now, only across divisions and medias, with a larger team and in a wider network.”
Thank you!
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Lecture:
Data Quality: A Success Factor for Accessing Cultural Heritage – A Look Behind the Scenes of the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek
Francesca Schulze (Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek/Deutsche Nationalbibliothek)
Thursday, 5th November 2015, 11:00 in the auditorium at the Altonaer Museum
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Shaping Access! More Responsibility for Cultural Heritage – Future Strategies
(Zugang gestalten! Mehr Verantwortung für das kulturelle Erbe – Zukunftsstrategien)
When:
5 /6 November 2015
Where:
Hamburg Foundation of History Museums in the Altona Museum
Museumsstraße 23
22765 Hamburg
To the entire programm
To registration
Partners 2015:
This year, the conference is supported by the Hamburg Foundation of History Museums, DigiS – Servicestelle Digitalisierung Berlin, the German Digital Library, the Internet & Gesellschaft Collaboratory e.V., the Institut Français Deutschland, iRights.info, the Berlin Jewish Museum, the Open Knowledge Foundation Deutschland, the House of the History of the Federal Republic of Germany Foundation, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
Management: Dr Paul Klimpel
The conference is under the patronage of the Deutsche UNESCO-Kommission e.V.
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Review: Shaping Access (Zugang gestalten) 2014