HIS395H5S LGBTQ2+ Oral History: Queer Peel (Omeka S Assignment)

Metadata, literally "data about data"; however, it might not be easy to understand with no prior experience. Murtha Baca, Head of the Digital Art History program at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, notes:

Metadata provides a means of indexing, accessing, preserving, and discovering digital resources. The volume of digital information available over electronic networks has created a pressing need for standards that ensure correct and proper use and interpretation of the data by its owners and users. Well-crafted metadata is needed more now than ever before and helps users to locate, retrieve, and manage information in this vast and complex universe.^[1]

Let's look at the important concepts underpinning metadata ▼ ▼ ▼

For an oral history metadata model there are four important concepts/categories: descriptive, administrative, preservation, and technical metadata^[2][3]:

• Descriptive: provides attributes of the item being described ― the name of the author, interviewer, and narrator, the date and place of the interview ― and content information ― the title, summary, and keywords/controlled vocabulary.
• Administrative: records information on provenance ― acquisition and appraisal information ― and rights (e.g., copyright holder and access rights). It also provides reproduction tracking. It also provides necessary information for preservation and includes number and location of copies, holding institution.
• Preservation: documents the physical condition (if it is not born-digital), preservation and data migration record.
• Technical: includes documentation on hardware and software and system-generated information (e.g., size, file format, compression ratios, and date stamps for recording), as well as technical data relating to any editing or transfers along the way.
• Rights and access: This category documents ownership and rights to use, including copyright, use and fair use, permission criteria, and restrictions.

These concepts/categories can roughly be translated to metadata standards like Dublin Core.

[1] Murtha Baca, Introduction to Metadata, 3rd ed. (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2016), https://www.getty.edu/publications/intrometadata/
[2] Anne J. Gilliland, "Setting the Stage," in Introduction to Metadata, https://www.getty.edu/publications/intrometadata/setting-the-stage/.
[3] Edward M. Corrado and Heather Moulaison Sandy, Digital Preservation for Libraries, Archives, and Museums, 2nd ed. (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), 66.

Dublin Core^TM is a type of metadata standard, which has been used for oral history projects. Dublin Core (DC) is a small set of vocabulary terms developed for describing digital objects. DC is the minimum standard for describing digital objects.

Dublin Core comes in a simple (15 elements) and a larger set. The Simple Dublin Core Metadata Element Set (DCMES) includes 15 metadata elements (terms). Each element describes a property of a resource (Metadata: Standards, Schemata, and Profiles, York University). You can modify the original elements.

Dublin Core (Original)

A Tailored Version: