Papers 2: Metadata Management and Perspectives

Metadata practice has evolved over the years with the developments in ICTs, as such it is very important to ascertain metadata librarians' competencies with ICT and metadata tools for the management of digital information resources. This study adopted survey research design. The secondary population comprised all federal universities in Nigeria that are having and managing digital information resources. The primary population comprised the 275 staffs from 20 federal universities that are involved in the application of metadata for the management of digital information resources. Due to the manageable size of the respondents, total enumeration was used. A structured questionnaire was used for data collection after being validated and its reliability tested. The research questions were analyzed with descriptive analysis while the hypothesis were tested with inferential statistics. The findings of this study shows that the respondents have the necessary competencies (skills) to support the management of digital information resources through the application of metadata practice. Furthermore, the analysis revealed that the respondents have more basic ICT skills than core metadata skills for the management of digital information resources. The study concluded that librarians’ competencies have a significant influence on the management of digital information resources in Federal University libraries in Nigeria. Therefore, it is recommended that the various university management understudied put metadata ICT skills of librarians and facilitating conditions into consideration when designing and implementing metadata projects for the management of digital information resources.

The ISO/IEC 19788 family, also known as Metadata for Learning Resources, was created to categorize resources in learning, education, and training contexts. It comprises various parts, such as Part 1: Framework (ISO/IEC 19788-1), initially specifying how to describe learning resources. Its broader applications have made it a horizontal standard for all ISO/IEC JTC1 standards groups promoting the interoperability of descriptions. The paper, written by editors of the standard, overviews ISO/IEC 19788-1's most essential aspects focusing on its underlying principles (such as multilingual or cultural diversity or technical neutrality) and the specification of entities involved in the description of resources (such as properties or application profiles), leaving out less pertinent details for a general presentation.

The DCMI Metadata Terms website is a basic resource for all those who implement or want to implement Dublin Core in their metadata projects, but also for all those students of Library and Information Science (or related degrees) who are starting in the complex world of information representation. The aim of this paper is to analyze the students' perception of the DCMI Metadata Terms webpage and of the metadata schema itself. This is done through a mainly quantitative survey to the students of the subjects Information Representation: Metadata and Digital Libraries and Repositories of the University Degree in Information Management and Digital Documentation of the University of Barcelona. The results show a moderately positive perception of the website and additional tools such as the Dublin Core User Guide. They also indicate that students have problems understanding the practical application of several terms from the metadata scheme itself (coverage, relation, and contributor, especially). The conclusions offer some recommendations to overcome the difficulties identified by the students, such as improving the clarity in the writing of some sections, the connection between the website and the Dublin Core User Guide and the presence of multilingual pages.