A pandemic and migration later, I’m back thinking about metadata quality. What does it mean to have quality metadata? Is it consistency? Is it accuracy?
What about consistency? If the data are consistently entered into a form, does that assure quality? For years, physical resources cataloged separately at my library were cataloged separately and a serials record was also cataloged. The serials record was linked to the individually cataloged pieces. In the item OPAC note of the serials record was the phrase “Search by author or call number”. This was a consistent practice. Yet, this consistency confused patrons endlessly. It wasn’t possible to put a request on the serials record because there were no items as the bibliographic record was linked to individually cataloged records that had items. These requests would make it to circulation who didn’t know what to do with it. Eventually, these were sent to metadata and cataloging and often lost in translation. A consistent practice that consistently confused users and staff alike. What this practice didn’t do was leverage linked series statements which is a powerful tool in discovery systems. Now the consistency is making sure the individual records has these series statements because it goes with a greater understanding of how our inventory records display and are searched in discovery. A much better way to leverage data and ensure quality that counts. This is because the quality means the user has less chance of being lost or encountering a dead end. With the linked series statement, the user can click to get all the titles in that series. With the previous practices, the user had to start their search again. And on top of that, the user needed to know more about the individually cataloged resource. What if they just want to peruse the titles in that series? The series statement search allows for that and hence discovery. In this sense, quality leverages the economical metadata description that benefits the user and multiple ways into searching, discovering, and identifying resources.
What about accuracy? Having metadata that is inaccurate can lead to lost resources. Accuracy is important. Our metadata come from a variety of sources. Not all sources are equal. In terms of accuracy, sources vary. The other day, an article found in our discovery system had the correct title, author, and summary. However, the cover art was incorrect. It turned out the ISBN used for the cover art was incorrect. It took 2 months for the vendor to fix that mistake. In our local inventory, some fail to follow our best practices where at times essential catchphrases are omitted from the record. One such is the use of the 655 and Electronic books which allows eResources to be correctly displayed as eBooks in our discovery layer. Without this, the ebook doesn’t display correctly. It would be amazing if our discovery layer could act on the leader, 008, 007, and/or 006 to determine if the eResource is a book. Unfortunately, it can’t . In this sense, accuracy is a strong factor for quality. But it is not just a question of being accurate. The accuracy must align to current and local practices that allow these data to display intelligibly to the user.
To consider quality is to consider how the metadata are accurately assembled so that discovery and exchange are as flawless as possible.
Celeripedean 