Maintaining Quality Metadata: Toward Effective Digital Resource Lifecycle Management Page: 2 of 12

                                
Among other UNT digital libraries initiatives, The Portal to Texas HistorysM, for
example, features digital reproductions of photographs, maps, letters, documents, books,
artifacts, and more. As can be seen from Figure-1, the number of metadata records added
to the Portal to Texas HistorysM has seen great increase and continues to rise at a
consistent rate. As the volume and complexity of resources increased, the need for highly-
developed resource management tools that could ensure quality and consistency became
apparent.
                      Files added to pth Collection

<--:> JL-.1JU1L-.i JL---J .H '. f .  M' 'L'f+  f'.J --LL'
ka .
SM1
-  - --  -    - . -  -  - -   -  - . -    - . -  -  ..-  -  -   .-  - . - -  -.. ..   -    -  -  - . -
Fig. 1. Metadata Records Added to the Portal to Texas Historysu (from May 2004 to May 2008)
2. Metadata Quality
Maintaining usable and sustainable digital collections necessitates maintaining high
quality metadata about those digital objects. The two aspects of digital library data quality
are the quality of the data in the objects themselves, and the quality of the metadata
associated with the objects.
Metadata errors occur in a variety of forms, but when errors exist, in whatever form,
they block access to resources. Metadata quality has a profound impact on the quality of
services that can be provided to users. The problem is particularly acute if there are
multiple institutions participating in a collaborative digitization project such as the Portal
to Texas HistorysM, where a high level of interoperability is an important element.

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