hangingtogether.org http://hangingtogether.org from OCLC Research Thu, 18 Jan 2018 20:18:35 +0000 en-US hourly 1 NEW: The Realities of Research Data Management: Part Three Now Available! http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Hangingtogetherorg/~3/yuqz0WtQhiQ/ http://hangingtogether.org/?p=6434#respond Wed, 17 Jan 2018 21:43:51 +0000 http://hangingtogether.org/?p=6434

More ]]> A new year heralds a new RDM report! Check out Incentives for Building University RDM Services, the third report in OCLC Research’s four-part series exploring the realities of research data management. Our new report explores the range of incentives catalyzing university deployment of RDM services. Our findings in brief: RDM is not a fad, but instead a rational response by universities to powerful incentives originating from both internal and external sources.

The Realities of Research Data Management, an OCLC Research project, explores the context and choices research universities face in building or acquiring RDM capacity. Findings are derived from detailed case studies of four research universities: University of Edinburgh, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Monash University, and Wageningen University and Research. Previous reports examined the RDM service space, and the scope of the RDM services deployed by our case study partners. Our final report will address sourcing and scaling choices in acquiring RDM capacity.

Incentives for Building University RDM Services continues the report series by examining the factors which motivated our four case study universities to supply RDM services and infrastructure to their affiliated researchers. We identify four categories of incentives of particular importance to RDM decision-making: compliance with external data mandates; evolving scholarly norms around data management; institutional strategies related to researcher support; and researcher demand for data management support. Our case studies suggest that the mix of incentives motivating universities to act in regard to RDM differ from university to university. Incentives, ultimately, are local.

RDM is both an opportunity and a challenge for many research universities. Moving beyond the recognition of RDM’s importance requires facing the realities of research data management. Each institution must shape its local RDM service offering by navigating several key inflection points: deciding to act, deciding what to do, and deciding how to do it. Our Realities of RDM report series examines these decisions in the context of the choices made by the case study partners.

Visit the Realities of Research Data Management website to access all the reports, as well as other project outputs.

 

 

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The OCLC Research Library Partnership: the challenges of developing scholarly services in a decentralized landscape http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Hangingtogetherorg/~3/8QLAimT-Yew/ http://hangingtogether.org/?p=6406#respond Sun, 07 Jan 2018 14:00:48 +0000 http://hangingtogether.org/?p=6406

More ]]> On November 1st, North American members of the OCLC Research Library Partnership came together in Baltimore to engage in day-long discussion on three concurrent topics:

My colleagues Karen Smith-Yoshimura and Merrilee Proffitt have previously written on the first two discussions.

Attendees at the North American meeting of OCLC Research Library Partners, 1 Nov 2017

Scholarly communications in a complex institutional environment

While recognizing the landscape of evolving scholarly services and workflows is extremely broad, my colleague Roy Tennant and I chose to frame our conversation around three distinct areas of research university and library engagement:

  • research data management (RDM)
  • research information management (RIM)
  • institutional repositories (IR)

We discussed each focus area for libraries singly but also explored how these services are increasingly intersecting, driven by needs for improved workflows for researchers—and institutions. These service areas may also intersect with non-library services such as annual academic review workflows and institutional reporting, as well as with the growing numbers of resources researchers are using to independently manage their citations, lab notebooks, and more.

We engaged in an in-depth discussion utilizing two recent OCLC Research reports:

and also looked to the recent report of a CNI Executive Roundtable, Rethinking Institutional Repository Strategies, as well as a short 2008 blog by Lorcan Dempsey on “Stitching Costs”, or the costs of integrating services and workflows.

While the topic of our conversation was scholarly communications workflows, services, and interoperability, the theme was the challenge of libraries responding to enterprise-wide needs. Participating institutions represented a variety of states of exploration and implementation, particularly in relation to emerging areas like RDM and RIM, and librarians described their own experiences and challenges, as they seek to build relationships with other institutional stakeholders that have different goals, priorities, and practices. Every institution is decentralized, and each institution is unique in its organization. Relationship building and communications across silos is time consuming and often political, and efforts to develop meaningful collaborations can be stymied by individual personalities or limited knowledge of another unit’s priorities.

The theme of our conversation was the challenge of libraries responding to enterprise-wide needs

This is particularly true for RIM and RDM services, as there are a great many institutional stakeholders, including academic colleges and departments, the research office (usually led by a VP of research), institutional research, graduate school, registrar, human resources,  tech transfer, and public affairs.

Libraries must work collaboratively with other stakeholders across the institution

Roger Schonfeld describes this situation well in the recent Ithaka S+R issue brief, Big Deal: Should Universities Outsource More Core Research Infrastructure?, which explores the rapid development of research workflow tools being adopted by researchers,

“Today almost no university is positioned to address its core interests here in any truly coherent way. The reason is essentially structural. There is no individual or organization within any university . . . that is responsible for the full suite of research workflow services. . . . No campus office or organization has responsibility for anything other than a subset of the system.”

What can you do to learn more?

Libraries are important stakeholders in these conversations but will be ineffectual if they try to act alone. It is increasingly important for librarians to understand the goals and activities of other university stakeholders as well as to succinctly and persuasively communicate their own value proposition. I want to encourage readers to explore a couple of OCLC Research publications that address these challenges:

Join us

Our interactions with OCLC Research Library Partners helps inform our future research plans, as we learn more about the challenges, pain points, and ambitions of our partner libraries. We will be continuing this conversation with our UK and European Research Library Partnership members on February 19 at the University of Edinburgh. We also want to encourage ALL research institutions to share about their practices and collaborations by participating in our Survey of Research Information Management Practices, conducted in collaboration with euroCRIS, which remains open through 31 January 2018.

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Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Hangingtogetherorg/~3/0RmFhsrI7hg/ http://hangingtogether.org/?p=6378#respond Mon, 27 Nov 2017 14:00:01 +0000 http://hangingtogether.org/?p=6378

More ]]> My colleagues Rebecca Bryant and Merrilee Proffitt have summarized discussions at our 1 November 2017 regional OCLC Research Library Partnership meeting in Baltimore on evolving scholarly services and workflows and on moving forward with unique and distinctive collections. This summarizes our third discussion thread, on equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI).

We conducted an “Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Survey of the OCLC Research Library Partnership” between 12 September and 13 October of this year.  We wanted to obtain a snapshot of the EDI efforts within the Partnership that could help identify specific follow-up activities which could provide assistance and better inform practice. We were pleased that 63 Partners in nine countries responded to the survey. A summary of the results served as the framework for discussions with Partners at our meeting in Baltimore.

Some highlights from the survey results:

  • 59% of the respondents had set up or plan to set up an EDI committee or working group.
  • 72% were using or planned to use EDI goals and principles to inform their collections’ workflows, practices, or services.
  • Of those who responded they were using or planned to use EDI goals, 79% were working with other institutions, organizations, or community groups on EDI to improve representation of marginalized groups in collections, practices, or services.
  • The top three areas that 80% or more of the respondents had already changed due to their institutions’ EDI goals and principles were:
    • Activities and events
    • Recruitment and retention
    • Outreach to marginalized communities
  • The top two areas where 70% or more of the respondents planned to change but haven’t yet were:
    • Search and discovery interfaces
    • Metadata descriptions in library catalogs

Biggest institutional challenges in Partners’ EDI efforts included building relationships with marginalized communities and creating a positive work climate, which, in turn, would help recruit and retain diverse staff.

OCLC Research staff will be looking at ways to follow-up on the suggestions from our Partnership meeting discussions, which included sharing a list of resources from the survey responses and researching the landscape of EDI efforts being conducted by other professional organizations to identify gaps so we can better leverage community activities. Meanwhile, feel free to post your own EDI efforts in the comments below!

The OCLC Research Library Partnership provides a unique transnational collaborative network of peers to address common issues as well as the opportunity to engage directly with OCLC Research.

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Announcing a Spanish language version of the Survey on Research Information Management Practices http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Hangingtogetherorg/~3/eKQ9e8u1tpw/ http://hangingtogether.org/?p=6350#respond Mon, 27 Nov 2017 05:22:02 +0000 http://hangingtogether.org/?p=6350

More ]]> We are pleased to announce that thanks to translation support from CONCYTEC, the Peruvian National Council for Science, Technology and Technological Innovation, the international Survey of Research Information Management Practices, collaboratively developed by OCLC Research and euroCRIS, is now available in a Spanish-language version.

CONCYTEC will be encouraging the completion of the survey by research organizations across Peru. Andres Melgar, Director for Evaluation and Knowledge Management of CONCYTEC states,  

CONCYTEC’s Direction of Evaluation and Knowledge Management is currently assessing RIM practices and capacities in Peruvian universities and research institutes, and finds that the OCLC & euroCRIS RIM Survey is a most valuable instrument which will be of great assistance in this endeavor towards the establishment of a national RIM infrastructure based on global standards.

CONCYTEC is a decentralized public body under the authority of the Peruvian Presidency of the Council of Ministers. Its mission is to formulate national science, technology and innovation (STI) policies and plans, and to promote and manage actions to create and transfer scientific knowledge and technology on behalf of the social and economic development of the country. Through its Direction of Evaluation and Knowledge Management, CONCYTEC is responsible for fostering the establishment and development of a national network of scientific information and interoperability with the goal of enabling timely and efficient management of STI statistics and the gathering of the information required for STI planning, operation, and promotion in the country.

We believe that this survey will provide valuable information to other stakeholders worldwide, including librarians, research administrators, institutional researchers, policy makers, and university and research institutional leaders. We encourage you to share information about this survey and to help ensure that your institution participates.

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The OCLC Research Library Partnership: moving forward with unique and distinctive collections http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Hangingtogetherorg/~3/QZ-BAn71Vp8/ Mon, 20 Nov 2017 20:30:08 +0000 http://hangingtogether.org/?p=6364

More ]]>

Arrows, Dean Hochman from Overland Park, Kansas, U.S. (arrows) CC BY 2.0

On November 1st, North American members of the OCLC Research Library Partnership came together in Baltimore to engage in day-long discussions on several topics. Rebecca has already posted about the discussion of evolving scholarly services and workflows. We also addressed issues pertaining to unique and distinctive collections, as well as conversations inspired by our recenturvey on equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in the OCLC Research Library Partnership. Here I’m reporting on the unique and distinctive collections thread; Karen will report soon on the EDI survey.

I was joined by our practitioner-in-residence, Chela Scott Weber, who helped lead this group. The conversation was rooted in her recently published position paper,  A Research and Learning Agenda for Archives, Special, and Distinctive Collections in Research Libraries. As a warm-up exercise we asked participants to share one word that characterizes their workplace culture. Terms used by those who work in archives and special collections revealed some of the disconnect that may characterize the relationship between special collections and the rest of the library: “siloed,” and “misunderstood” being two examples. Others characterized their workplace culture as being “complex” or “entrepreneurial.”  At all institutions, communications and “keeping everyone in the loop” can be a challenge.

We also asked participants to reflect on what is useful about OCLC Research outputs, specifically the work of the Research Library Partnership. OCLC Research staff were identified as an asset: “You are plugged in to what is going on in our field,” “You are able focus on what is a barrier to progress,“ and “You are positioned to do legwork and synthesis on our behalf.” Participants value that staff take the time to collect and record the information that partners cannot. “You catch things that are not necessarily on our radar.”  OCLC Research reports were also identified as bringing value. Reports such as Taking Our Pulse: The OCLC Research Survey of Archives and Special Collections provide institutions with benchmarking and record “the state of our profession.” Reports such as those in the “collective collection” series “give us the vocabulary we need to talk about important issues.” Reports have been timely and have touched on areas that participants need help with. “It means something when OCLC brings people together around an issue.” Our work on digital cameras in special collections reading rooms served to validate and codify emerging practice. Such reports have “provided some cover to talk about difficult issues” and “give us a structure or vocabulary for challenging conversations.” The brevity of some OCLC Research reports was also called out as being a virtue: “I can read them at my lunch break,” proclaimed one participant.  OCLC provides “neutral reporting that we can take and adapt.” Participants selectively use reports to advocate up their administrative reporting chains. It is clear, however, that much of this valuable information is not getting to deans and directors, and participants encouraged OCLC Research to find ways to “feed more strategic stuff up the food chain.”

Discussion session participants took time to identify some projects from the Research and Learning Agenda that seem ripe for OCLC to pursue actively, and three model projects were discussed in some detail. 

  1. The current state of resource allocation
  2. Frameworks for distributed responsibility
  3. Mapping the systems ecosystem

Please note that while these areas received the most attention at this meeting, any projects undertaken by OCLC Research need considerable internal review as well as more community consultation before going forward. 

The current state of resource allocation
Special collections professionals are sometimes challenged to compare themselves to comparable institutions in terms of variables such as collection size, staff size, allocations of funding for staffing, and other operational costs (both “hard” and “soft” money). The group that participated in this discussion recommended that OCLC Research collect data to allow for such comparisons. Collection of data could utilize aspects of the forthcoming SAA/RBMS guidelines on holdings metrics. Such a project could perhaps be similar to the ILL Cost Calculator, in which institutions will contribute data that will enable production of reports.

Significant questions raised included these: How do you measure distinction? If distinctiveness is what gives these collections/units value, do things that are currently measured (or that are measurable) shine a light on this?

Frameworks for distributed responsibility
Opportunities exist to address the challenges of born-digital collections, both those curated in special collections and other materials acquired and managed across the library, such as research data and other research assets. The issues strongly relate to themes surfaced in the 2015 report The Archival Advantage. A proposed mode of working would be to survey RLP institutions, asking questions such as these: Are special collections and data curation teams working together? How much are libraries investing in supporting “born-digital special collections,” research data management, and related activities? A survey could reveal institutions’ preservation strategies for born digital and probe the need for particular skill sets. Outcomes could include survey results and case studies that could illuminate where digital collections are held across the library and who is responsible for them in processes across the continuum from selection and appraisal to delivery for research.

Mapping the systems ecosystem
Discovery and access for materials in special collections and archives are hindered by the fact that these materials are described in systems that don’t mesh with those used to manage “mainstream” library collections. This is a pressing problem, given that considerable effort is put into collecting and stewarding materials that are more like special collections and less like books and journals (see, for example, the reports The Evolving Scholarly Record and Stewardship of the Evolving Scholarly Record). Systems that could be better integrated include institutional repositories, ArchivesSpace, Aeon, CollectionsSpace, integrated library systems and other discovery and management systems. Stakeholders include archives and special collections professionals, metadata and access librarians, and those responsible for preservation. A project in this area should include people who work at both strategic and operational levels. A desired outcome would be greater ease of discovery for archives and special collections and other materials outside the “mainstream,” as well as improved backend processing. Research results would inform systems development and institutional strategy.

Thanks are due to our discussion participants for engaging so energetically and for the good thinking they brought to our conversations. We will be continuing this particular thread within the Research Library Partnership over the coming weeks and months, so stay tuned!

The OCLC Research Library Partnership provides a unique transnational collaborative network of peers to address common issues as well as the opportunity to engage directly with OCLC Research.

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Who should take the Survey of Research Information Management Practices? http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Hangingtogetherorg/~3/j4QmmbUuwqE/ Wed, 15 Nov 2017 11:00:16 +0000 http://hangingtogether.org/?p=6332

More ]]> Is it someone in the library? Or maybe in the office of institutional research? What about the office of the vice president for research? Or maybe the provost’s or rector’s office?

It depends.

Practices vary regionally and also institutionally, and we hope to learn more about these variations through the international Survey of Research Information Management Practices, which has been collaboratively developed by OCLC Research and euroCRISAs we articulated in a recent OCLC Research position paper, Research Information Management: Defining RIM and the Library’s Role, because of the enterprise nature of the data inputs and uses, there are numerous institutional stakeholders in research information management, including the research office, institutional research, provost or rector, library, human resources, registrar, and campus communications. In some institutions, such as the University of Arizona, the library has assumed a leading role. In other institutions, such as Universität Münster, the research office takes the lead. 

Connecting the survey with the right person within each institution is a central challenge for this study. And that’s where we need your help in promoting this survey and getting it to the right person at your own institution. While completing the survey itself should take only 10-30 minutes, we recognize that it may take some additional legwork to answer all of the questions on behalf of your institution. That’s why we’ve provided a PDF version of the survey for you to review in advance. We also want to encourage all research institutions and universities to participate, regardless of the status of RIM adoption. One survey per institution, please.

In the meantime, OCLC and euroCRIS are working to promote the survey through multiple channels, including:

Our goal is to collect and share meaningful information on behalf of all stakeholders within the research information management landscape worldwide. We need the leadership and engagement of each of you in the community. Thanks for participating, and contact me if you have questions.

Rebecca Bryant, PhD

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How much metadata is practical? http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Hangingtogetherorg/~3/Cue6vJcSKzE/ http://hangingtogether.org/?p=6328#comments Tue, 14 Nov 2017 14:00:15 +0000 http://hangingtogether.org/?p=6328

More ]]> That was the topic discussed recently by OCLC Research Library Partners metadata managers, initiated by Jennifer Baxmeyer of Princeton, MJ Han of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Stephen Hearn of the University of Minnesota. With the increasing availability of online metadata, we are seeing metadata added to discovery environments representing objects of widely varying granularity. For example, an article in Physical Review Letters—Precision Measurement of the Top Quark Mass in Lepton + Jets Final State—has approximately 300 author names for a five page article (some pictured here).

This seems disproportionate, especially when other objects with many contributors such as feature films and orchestral recordings are represented by only a relative handful of the associated names. If all the names associated with a film or a symphony recording were readily available as metadata, would it be appropriate to include them in library cataloging? Ensuring optimal search results in an environment in which metadata from varying sources with differing models of granularity and extensiveness poses challenges for catalogers and metadata managers.

Abbreviated forms of author names on journal articles make it difficult, and often impossible, to match them to the correct authority form, if it exists. Some discovery systems show only the first two or three lines of author names.  Research Information Management systems make it easier to apply some identity management for local researchers so that they are correctly associated with the articles they have written, which are displayed as part of their profiles. (See for example, Scholars@Duke, Experts@Minnesota or University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Experts research profiles.)  A number noted that attempts to encourage their researchers to include an ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier) in their profiles have met with limited success. Linked data was posited as a potential way to access information across many environments, including those in Research Information Systems, but would require wider use of identifiers.

Much of the discussion was about receiving not enough good metadata from vendors rather than too much. A number of the metadata managers viewed quality at least as important as granularity. Some libraries reject records that are do not meet their minimum standards, while others apply batch updates before loading the records. One criteria for “good enough” metadata is whether it is sufficient to generate an accurate citation. Metadata quality has become a key concern, as evidenced by the Digital Library Federation’s Metadata Assessment Working Group, formed to “measure, evaluate and assess the metadata” in a variety of digital library systems. Record-by-record enhancement was widely considered impractical.

Information surplus will only increase, with accompanying varying levels of metadata granularity. It remains to be seen how the community can bridge if not integrate the various silos of information.

 

 

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Use OCLC Research to Examine the Realities of Research Data Management at Your Institution http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Hangingtogetherorg/~3/t79d1GmIZlY/ Tue, 07 Nov 2017 16:16:35 +0000 http://hangingtogether.org/?p=6303

More ]]> Last week, I had the opportunity to meet with North American members of the OCLC Research Library Partnership in Baltimore, Maryland, and to engage in a day-long discussion about evolving scholarly services and workflows, particularly institutional repositories, research data management, and research information management. The OCLC Research Library Partnership provides a unique transnational collaborative network of peers to address common issues as well as the opportunity to engage directly with OCLC Research.

Much of our group discussion focused on research data management (RDM) services, which is a growing interest for libraries and a focus of inquiry here at OCLC Research. In particular, we engaged partners in conversation about the Realities of Research Data Management, a four-part series that explores how research universities are addressing the challenges of managing research data throughout the research life cycle. In the first report, we introduced a simple framework for describing the three major components of RDM services:

  • Education—educating researchers and other stakeholders on the importance of research data management and encouraging RDM skill-building
  • Expertise—providing decision support and customized solutions for researchers working through specific research data management problems
  • Curation—supplying technical infrastructure and related services that support data management throughout the research cycle

In the second report, we applied this framework to describe the RDM service bundles at four research institutions, such as at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, represented here.

Our exploration of RDM practices focused on four research universities with fairly mature service bundles. Some of our key findings include:

  • Each institution’s service offering is unique and shaped by both local and external conditions
  • It may not be necessary for an institution to implement the full range of possible RDM services
  • The RDM service bundle is NOT just local offering but also includes the external resources (such as external data centers) in use by researchers

The goal of this research is to provide libraries and research institutions with concrete examples of RDM services at four case study institutions with rich offerings to explore. The RDM Service Categories framework is also intended to provide a way for institutions as well as the broader scholarly communications community to discuss RDM offerings. We used this model in our discussion at Baltimore, and I was delighted to find it seemed to work as intended—as a useful framework for discussion, sharing, and scoping. By talking about three broad, discrete categories of services, we were able to share and compare more easily, without having to articulate each specific offering.

I want to invite you to apply this framework to the RDM service bundle at your institution.

Two reports in this series are still forthcoming, with Part Three: Incentives for Building University RDM Services coming in December and a final report on the sourcing and scaling of RDM services to come early in 2018.

Our conversations with Research Library Partners extended beyond RDM and also included sharing about interoperability, identifiers, and collaborations with other campus units. I will be sharing more about these conversations in future blog posts.

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Take the OCLC-euroCRIS survey of research information management practices http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Hangingtogetherorg/~3/mNzUHCDGHw0/ Wed, 25 Oct 2017 13:54:44 +0000 http://hangingtogether.org/?p=6290

More ]]> Research information management (RIM), also often called Current Research Information Systems (CRISs), is the aggregation, curation, and utilization of metadata about research activities. Institutional RIM adoption, in tandem with activities by publishers, funders, and libraries, can help to reliably connect a complex scholarly communications landscape of researchers, affiliations, publications, datasets, grants, projects, and their persistent identifiers.

OCLC Research recognizes that libraries today are playing a larger role in research information management at institutions worldwide, and is conducting research on behalf of the library community in order to better understand library roles and institutional needs in this rapidly changing ecosystem.

This year we have partnered with euroCRIS as well as with librarians from OCLC Research Library Partnership institutions to develop a survey to help us understand and report on the state of RIM activities worldwide.

We invite universities, research institutes, and other research organizations to participate in the survey, and to help us learn more about:

  • Why have institutions adopted–or are considering adopting–RIM infrastructures?
  • How are institutions using RIM functionality? What are the principal uses?
  • Who are institutional stakeholders, and what, in particular, is the role of libraries?
  • What processes and systems are in use? How do they interoperate with internal and external systems? What is the scope?
  • What are the principal drivers?
  • What are regional and international differences in drivers, uses, and processes?

Survey findings and data will be published CC-BY in 2018.

Take the survey.

More information, including a PDF copy of the survey, is available at oc.lc/rim. A Spanish language version of the survey will be available in November, thanks to partners at CONCYTEC, the Peruvian National Council for Science, Technology and Technological Innovation, which will be using this instrument to assess RIM practices in Peruvian universities and institutes, as it seeks to establish a national RIM infrastructure.

I also invite you to read the recent OCLC Research position paper titled Research Information Management: Defining RIM and the Library’s Role. This publication, prepared by OCLC Research and a working group of librarians representing OCLC Research Library Partnership institutions, is intended to help libraries and other institutional stakeholders understand developing research information management practices—and particularly the value add that libraries can offer in a complex ecosystem.

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Metadata advocacy http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Hangingtogetherorg/~3/uGvbAGV5DAI/ http://hangingtogether.org/?p=6282#comments Tue, 17 Oct 2017 13:00:34 +0000 http://hangingtogether.org/?p=6282

More ]]> That was the topic discussed recently by OCLC Research Library Partners metadata managers, initiated by Sharon Farnel of the University of Alberta, Roxanne Missingham of Australian National University, and John Riemer of the University of California, Los Angeles. An indispensable skill in these times is the ability to explain in a concise, compelling, and relatable way to administrators and other decision makers why resources should be allocated to creating and maintaining structured metadata. The audience for these appeals frequently will not have a background or past work experience in this type of work. Many professionals in need of ideas for making arguments for metadata as a strategic priority could benefit from exchanging ideas and techniques for effective advocacy.

A number of managers reported that they had opportunities to advocate the benefits of good metadata with colleagues in other units. Several have cross-divisional committees which coordinate metadata efforts.  Letting colleagues in other departments make the pitch for good metadata can be more effective than doing it yourself. Having catalogers staff the reference desks can both demonstrate the value of metadata to public services colleagues as well as illustrate which metadata is really important to discover and locate the library’s holdings. Colleagues need to understand that metadata will be required from the earliest acquisition stages and for digitized (or born-digital) collections. Some have started requiring a “metadata strategy” for each new project, and including a metadata component in their collection development strategies.

Some strategies for effectively advocating the value of metadata included:

  • Show practical examples highlighting end-user value.
  • Demonstrate to senior staff with common names how good metadata distinguishes them from others sharing the same name.
  • Point to examples where cutting corners in metadata creation caused more work and expense later.
  • Tie requests for funding to an institution’s strategic initiatives.
  • Give examples of how much we’ve changed and are doing things differently.
  • Note how good metadata today can easily be re-used in a linked data environment in the future.

Metadata managers had many “elevator speeches” to describe metadata’s value, including:

  • Metadata services represents “a value delivery system, not just a cost center”.
  • Good metadata enables discovery in multilingual and non-textual environments.
  • The facets we use to narrow search results in the online catalog are the metadata that we are creating.
  • Imagine not being able to find items, not being able to account for expenditure of public funds acquiring materials, not being able to identify resources for digitization or exclude what is in copyright.
  • Metadata is more effective for discovery and information management than the “data deluge” of full-text searching.
  • Many of the materials in institutions’ collections are not searchable as full text, and thus people must rely on the ability to search and browse the metadata describing them.
  • Cooperation with partners (other higher education institutions or legal deposit libraries) requires us to know what we actually have in our collections, often at quite a granular level.
  • Producing quality metadata influences research funding and assessment.
  • If researchers can’t find data sets, their value is diminished.
  • Scholar portals that highlight an institution’s research output rely on good metadata for discovery.

Many noted that automating routine tasks has dramatically increased their output, even with fewer metadata specialists.  Metadata specialists are often perceived as an inefficient “cottage industry” devoted to “data entry” into templates.  The level of expertise required is frequently underestimated. “What metadata professionals do is to provide a research infrastructure, and like other forms of infrastructure, it is taken for granted until something goes wrong with it.”

Given the increased demand for good metadata, we need to demonstrate our agility to address new initiatives, our interest in exploring new ways of doing things, and use automation wherever possible. Automation is critical for metadata remediation. Combining professional catalogers’ expertise with technology improves throughout, and frees up staff to describe the library’s distinctive collections no one else has.

The British Library’s Unlocking the Value: The British Library’s Collection Metadata Strategy 2015-2018 offers a number of persuasive statements, including this one from its summary:

Our vision is that by 2020 the Library’s collection metadata assets will be comprehensive, coherent, authoritative and sustainable, enabling their full value to be unlocked for improved content management, greater collaboration and wider use of the collection.

 

Graphic: Word cloud generated from June 2017 discussion notes.

 

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conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf