Metadata Standards
Describing Your Digital Resources
The Library suggests a minimum list of categories of information that you should use to describe the content of your resources as well as the nature of the digital files themselves. The guidelines that follow outline the type of descriptive information that we recommend you collect and give you some basics for structuring that data. We suggest that you contact Jocelyn Olson (phone: 4-4958) in our Cataloging and Metadata Services Department at the start of your project for assistance in setting up a process and identifying appropriate descriptive terminology.
There is important descriptive information to be gathered both about the intellectual content of the resource and about the digital creation. These elements are outlined below. Some fields are strongly recommended, some are required, and others are optional. In order for the Library to take ownership of your resource and/or commit to digital preservation, we ask that you consider all of the fields for describing the intellectual content or the digital resource. The absolutely required fields are marked with asterisks. Please document your practices and standards and be prepared to include that documentation with any data files you deliver to the Library.
The Notes in the third column refer to the notes available on the Notes About Metadata tab.
Describing the Intellectual Content
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*Title |
The actual title of the content of the resource, or a brief descriptive phrase. |
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*Agent |
The name(s) of individuals or organizations that bear some important relationship to the content. At least one agent of some sort is required. Agents have types (creator, publisher, contributor) and one of these types is also required to be specified in the data. |
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*Date |
Date or date range associated with the creation of the content. |
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Place |
A physical location associated with the creation of the content (i.e. the place of publication or the location of a building or of a painting). |
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Physical Description |
The extent of the resource (number of pages of the print book), physical dimensions (for paintings or sculpture), the medium (bronze, oil), etc. |
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*Content Type |
The nature of the content being described. |
Describing the Digital Resource
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*Identifier |
A name/code for each resource that is unique within your database. |
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*Access Rights |
The level of access that a member of the U.Va. community or the general public can have to this resource. |
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Agent |
The name(s) of individuals or organizations that bear some important relationship to the digital resource. |
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*Resource Type |
The type of digital object being described |
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*Date |
The date the digital file was created. |
Optional Elements
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Description |
Descriptive text, notes, remarks, or comments about the resource. |
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Language |
The language(s) of the intellectual content of the resource |
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Subject/Keywords |
Topic of the resource. Typically the subject will be expressed as keywords or phrases that describe the subject content of the resource, or terms related to significant associations of people, events, or other contextual information. |
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Place coverage |
A physical location represented by the content (i.e. the geographic subject of a book or the representation of a place within a painting). |
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Date coverage |
Date or date range represented by the content (i.e. the temporal subject of a book). |
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Relationships |
Used to relate two metadata records together, i.e. items in a set, issues of a newspaper, a painting located within a Church. |
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Mimetype |
A standard for the formatting of files so that they can be sent over the Internet. |
Description
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