Creating metadata practices for MIT's OPenCourseWare Project

Headnote

Keywords

Online cataloguing, Libraries, USA

Abstract

The MIT libraries were called upon to recommend a metadata scheme for the resources contained in MIT's OpenCourseWare (OCW) project. The resources in OCW needed descriptive, structural, and technical metadata. The SCORM standard, which uses IEEE Learning Object Metadata for its descriptive standard, was selected for its focus on educational objects. However, it was clear that the Libraries would need to recommend how the standard would be applied and adapted to accommodate needs that were not addressed in the standard's specifications. The newly formed MIT Libraries Metadata Unit adapted established practices from AACR2 and MARC traditions when facing situations in which there were no precedents to follow.

Electronic access

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Until 2002, MIT Libraries' Bibliographic Access Services only dabbled in non-MARC metadata. The reliable MARC format met most cataloging needs for decades. In the last few years, encounters with other metadata schemes began to occur with increasing regularity. Frequently, digital objects carried metadata that could be used in the online catalog if harvested and converted to MARC. The libraries converted a sampling of Dublin Core (DC) and Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) metadata records into MARC to make them compatible with MIT's local integrated library system. The focus of these experiments was to make the data as MARC-like as possible rather than to exploit the features of the alternative standards.

With the advent of DSpace, MIT's digital repository, the libraries' staff gradually realized that not all metadata would ultimately be converted to MARC and that in some cases MARC would not be the most desirable standard. DSpace contains items in a variety of formats. Some of the items are born digital and others are converted from print resources. Dublin Core was chosen as the DSpace metadata standard because it is well-developed and flexible enough to address the needs of a wide array of formats.

DC's similarity to MARC also made it a logical choice for MIT's first major venture into non-MARC metadata. Its advantage over MARC is in being tailored specifically for describing and providing access to electronic resources. The DC records in DSpace...