ELAR Metadata

Introduction

ELAR supports sets of relationships between resources, depositors, users, and ELAR itself. Metadata is the "glue" that allows all these entities to interact. ELAR metadata provides the means to describe, preserve, manage, discover, and access its deposited materials.

Metadata is data about data. It is the means by which a resource is described, and an aid in its management, discovery, and access.

Take, for example, an ordinary book. Its metadata could come from:

• the information on its title and copyright pages
• its library catalogue record

Metadata can be found either within a resource or be provided externally to it. Media files, such as sound files, are examples where metadata is typically external to the resource. Many other kinds of resources, including books, have parts within them that could be classified as "data about data", such as heading and labels, captions of figures and photos. For further discussion, see Metadata for Your Digital Resource, Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS).

Metadata principles

• All deposits must be accompanied by at least a minimal set of metadata (see below)
• Some metadata can (and should) change over time
• Supply and ongoing maintenance of metadata will ideally involve the depositor, ELAR and other stakeholders
• A selection of metadata will be made widely accessible to inform the public about the existence and nature of materials
• ELAR will define, publish and from time to time develop its metadata requirements

Metadata process

Assigning and updating metadata is an ongoing process. Some metadata must be supplied at the time of deposit, while others may be supplied after materials have been deposited. Some metadata are unlikely to change over time - even a long time - such as the place where the recording was made or the unique identifier (or ID) assigned to a resource by ELAR. Other metadata are not only subject to change, but may require change to ensure appropriate management, such as access restrictions and the depositor's contact details.

For case studies on preparing data for submission to an archive, see the E-MELD Case Studies of Resource Digitization.

Metadata content

You should also provide further metadata fields (you can do this later) to give a complete description of the resource for various communities that may have an interest in it (such as linguists, language community members, educationalists etc).

You provide metadata in two basic ways:

• Deposit-level metadata (applies to whole bundle of materials deposited)
  Use the ELAR Deposit Form to create Deposit level metadata

• Item-level metadata (also called file-level metadata)
  The rest of this page describes how to prepare item-level metadata

Item-level metadata

Minimal set

The following metadata elements should be provided for each item (file) at the time of deposit (drawing on OLAC terminology):

• Identifier: A means to uniquely identify each item in the deposit. This might be either:
  • a unique name for each item listed together with the full filename (and media carrier label if relevant) or
  • a unique filename for each item
• Format: Describe formats
  • file format
  • mark-up format
  • character encoding format
• Creator: Entity primarily responsible for making the content
• Subject.language: The language(s) which is described or documented
• Language: The language in which the content is expressed or introduced.
• Rights: Information about rights held in and over the resource (ELAR will apply default values if required)

Note that if you do not define Rights for an item, ELAR will assign that item the rights you defined in your deposit form.

In certain cases, exceptions to the metadata requirements may be made. Please contact ELAR to discuss further.

Recommended additions to minimal set

ELAR recommends that, if possible, you also provide following metadata fields at the time of deposit:

• Title: A short name given to the resource
• Description: An account of the content of the resource
• Type: The nature or genre of the content of the resource

Other metadata

Other metadata improve the description of the resource for various communities that may have an interest in it (such as linguists, language community members, educationalists etc). Additional metadata fields can be provided at or after the time of deposit. Language documentation and description is an ongoing process, and some metadata will naturally be created or updated after a resource has been deposited. ELAR recognises that changing depositor and user needs will require us to evolve and augment our metadata systems over time.

Structure and format

You can create metadata in several ways. In each case, make sure that at least the minimal set is present.

Provide metadata covering each file in one of these ways:

1. TABLE. As a table where each row represents one item (file), and each column (field) a metadata field.
   Each field must be documented or mapped to a OLAC or IMDI field;
   See an example table in MS EXCEL format
2. XML format conforming to the OLAC metadata schema.
   See an example at: http://www.language-archives.org/OLAC/0.4/olac.xml
3. XML format conforming to the IMDI metadata schema.
   The IMDI editor can generate this for you
4. RELATIONAL. A relational format, such as a relational database. The database structure should be documented, and each field documented or mapped to an OLAC or IMDI field.

... more information on who should use XML

See also: Shortcuts for inheriting repeated values in metadata.

We will accept metadata that is unstructured free text if necessary. However, we would then need to interpret your metadata and manually enter catalogue entries, so you should be available to assist in this process, and to check the result.