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Selection of a presentation format for a MAP will depend on the local needs and applications that it is designed to support. A MAP for use in the creation or transcription of metadata values by catalogers and other staff should provide human-readable guidance, perhaps including detailed instructions for creating, selecting, and formatting values. When using metadata-creation tools, a machine-readable MAP can pass customizations and constraints such as value data type, cardinality, and VESs for the selection of values to a data-entry form. In these cases an additional human-readable format may also be helpful during descriptive work. For some applications, metadata values for digital objects such as file format, size, and checksum may be generated or extracted based on the specifications in a machine-readable MAP, with no need for human-readable guidance at the point of metadata creation.
Natural Language MAPs
To successfully implement any MAP, the requirements for a metadata model will need to be provided in human-readable format at some point, even if only as a set of specifications provided to software developers. A large portion of existing MAPs have been designed expressly for reading and use by humans. This makes sense in the context of libraries, where metadata is often created by staff who need a comprehensive set of instructions to perform their work.
The Metadata Application Profile Clearinghouse Project reflects the prevalence of human-readable MAP presentations. This online resource provides access to MAPs submitted by a variety of organizations, with a focus on those created for use in describing collections in digital repositories. While the Clearinghouse provides only a very small cross section of MAPs, the prevalence of human-readable formats is remarkable: all eighteen organizations that have submitted MAPs to date use one or more human-readable versions, and only one of these has provided versions for machine processing.1
Many questions arise for metadata creators in the process of describing information resources. Content standards for library cataloging are complex, and the need for guidance makes it unsurprising that human-readable MAP formats are the most commonly used in libraries, as they can provide the rules for generating metadata alongside examples of properly formed values and other relevant information. The popularity of human-readable MAP formats means that there are abundant examples in this category.
The...