ALCTS PARS Preservation Metadata Interest Group

2010 Annual Intellectual Access to Preservation Metadata Interest Group (IAPM-IG) Meeting minutes

  • 1.  2010 Annual Intellectual Access to Preservation Metadata Interest Group (IAPM-IG) Meeting minutes

    Posted Jul 14, 2010 12:35 PM

    Sunday, June 27, 2010
    Washington D. C.

    Report of Business

    The Intellectual Access to Preservation Metadata Interest Group meeting was called to order at 10:30 a.m., Sunday, June 27th at the Annual Meeting of the American Library Association.  The first half hour of the meeting consisted of the IAPM-IG business meeting.  During the business meeting Janet Gertz, Chair of the PARS Audio Preservation Metadata Task Force, gave an update on a chart that the Task Force co-prepared with the MLA BCC Metadata Subcommittee.  The chart, titled “Metadata Standards and Guidelines Relevant to Digital Audio,” provides a quick overview of metadata standards that are currently being used to describe, manage, and preserve digital audio files.  It can be found at: http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/alcts/resources/preserv/audio_metadata.pdf.  Following Janet’s report a new vice-chair was elected starting July 2010.  Meghan Banach, Metadata Catalog Librarian at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries, was elected by voice vote by those present at the meeting.

    The last hour of the meeting consisted of a presentation by George Blood of Safe Sound Archive.  The following is an excerpt of the presentation’s description: "SIPS, DIPS and Trips: How we will know if we've collected enough, or the right, metadata?"

    “Many institutions rely on the [OAIS] model for their preservation programs, yet few have built end-to-end solutions. Libraries digitize large volumes of resources, collect metadata and create Submission Information Packets (SIPS) for our digital repositories, trusted or otherwise. The use of metadata to access those collections is years behind the actual collection of the data. How did we choose our metadata without knowing who would need or how it would be accessed? Perhaps the focus should have been "What metadata shall we collect?” rather than "What metadata will users and managers need? Will we be able to access our metadata in meaningful ways to aid discovery, to manage collections, and make [Dissemination Information Packets] (DIPS) users need?”

    George explored these questions and proposed that a standard set of brief information such as file property information, title, creator, date, and keywords might be all the end user would be interested in knowing from a DIP.  If a user were interested in more information, they could choose to get a fuller record or even a complete record of all the metadata about that particular object or objects.

    At the end of his presentation, George called for the formation a task force that would draft a uniform standard for what kind of metadata a DIP should include.  George hoped that the task force might be able to draft something in time to present it at ALA Midwinter 2011.  Several people in attendance volunteered to join the task force, and some names of people not present at the meeting were also suggested for the task force.

    The meeting was concluded by Nicole Saylor, co-chair of the IAPM-IG, at 12:00.

    Meeting notes submitted by Meghan Banach.