Finding the right balance between human effort and automation for metadata creation

1. Finding the right balance between human effort and automation for metadata creation Jenn Riley Metadata Librarian Indiana University Digital Library Program

2. Expectations for discovery systems are rising • Growth of cutting-edge systems outside of libraries affecting user expectations • Higher user expectations is a good thing! • Many expected functions will be easier with robust structured metadata • Genre access • Faceted browsing • Limiting scope by time, place, etc. Metadata Enhancement and OAI Workshop

3. Libraries are having trouble meeting those expectations • Non-textual resources are more difficult to search • Legacy metadata isn’t always structured in ways that allow high-level services • Legacy metadata doesn’t always include enough information to allow high-level services • Creating new metadata needed to provide high-level services is prohibitively expensive Metadata Enhancement and OAI Workshop

4. Enter automatic enhancement methods • Much research has been done • Little of it has been put into production systems in library metadata creation environments • Still requires human intervention • Fear of human skills becoming devalued • Metadata aggregators, out of necessity, are among the first implementers in the cultural heritage community • Automatic enhancement holds great promise for standardizing and streamlining metadata creation and aggregation activities Metadata Enhancement and OAI Workshop

5. IU’s interest in automated metadata enhancement • IU DLP has a strong history of providing high-level discovery services based on quality structured metadata • Many collections could benefit • Legacy collections described in MARC • Special collections largely undescribed, especially at the item level • Currently developing new digital library infrastructure into which enhancement tools could be integrated • Technical services looking to expand metadata activities Metadata Enhancement and OAI Workshop

6. IU’s role in the DLF Aquifer Metadata Remediation project • Preliminary data analysis • Define tools needed to review and report on effectiveness of remediation experiments • Iteratively review results of the automatic enhancement processes • Test human review workflows Metadata Enhancement and OAI Workshop

7. Benefits to IU of the Aquifer Metadata Remediation project • Better understand aggregated metadata • Identify remediation tools that address local needs • Plan for inclusion of these tools into our local workflows • Building relationships between the Digital Library Program and Technical Services Metadata Enhancement and OAI Workshop

8. The big picture from IU’s perspective • Automated metadata enhancement techniques promise to play an essential role in building and aggregating digital library collections • But they are not a “magic bullet” – must be used together with other techniques • User-contributed metadata • Content-based retrieval • Item-level attention by specialists Metadata Enhancement and OAI Workshop

9. More information • jenlrile@indiana.edu • These presentation slides: <http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/~jenlrile/presentations/meow2006/metadataEnhancementAtIU.ppt> • Aquifer project Web site: <http://www.diglib.org/aquifer/> Metadata Enhancement and OAI Workshop