Paper describing the results of initial research to evaluate general information about how records change in a digital library, using the UNT digital collections as a sample set. The analysis looked at several key concepts including the number of records that have been edited, the number of edits per record, the number of editors per record, the amount of change in file size and in completeness (i.e., values in required fields), and changes in access to digital objects.
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Paper describing the results of initial research to evaluate general information about how records change in a digital library, using the UNT digital collections as a sample set. The analysis looked at several key concepts including the number of records that have been edited, the number of edits per record, the number of editors per record, the amount of change in file size and in completeness (i.e., values in required fields), and changes in access to digital objects.
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10 p.
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Abstract: This paper reports results of an exploratory quantitative analysis of metadata versioning in a large-scale digital library hosted by University of North Texas. The study begins to bridge the gap in the information science research literature to address metadata change over time. The authors analyzed the entire population of 691,495 unique item-level metadata records in the digital library, with metadata records supplied from multiple institutions and by a number of metadata creators with varying levels of skills. We found that a high proportion of metadata records undergo changes, and that a substantial number of these changes result in increased completeness (the degree to which metadata records include at least one instance of each element required in the Dublin Core-based UNTL metadata scheme). Another observation of this study is that the access status of a high proportion of metadata records changes from hidden to public; at the same time the reverse process also occurs, when previously visible to the public metadata records become hidden for further editing and sometimes remain hidden. This study also reveals that while most changes -- presumably made to improve the quality of metadata records -- increase the record length, surprisingly, some changes decrease record length. Further investigation is needed into reasons for unexpected findings as well as into more granular dimensions of metadata change at the level of individual records, metadata elements, and data values. This paper suggests some research questions for future studies of metadata change in digital libraries that capture metadata versioning information.
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Presentation for the 2014 DCMI International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications. This presentation discusses a case study of how descriptive metadata changes in the UNT Libraries' collections.
Relationship to this item: (Has Version)
How Descriptive Metadata Changes in the UNT Libraries' Collection: A Case Study [Presentation], ark:/67531/metadc406363
This dataset contains data samples from metadata records extracted from the UNT Libraries' Digital Collections. It contains one sample per metadata record version in the system with aggregate counts of fields and also hash values of an element as well. Data was collected in March 2014 with dates from May 19, 2004 to February 4, 2014.
Tarver, Hannah; Zavalina, Oksana; Phillips, Mark Edward; Alemneh, Daniel Gelaw & Shakeri, Shadi.How Descriptive Metadata Changes in the UNT Libraries' Collections: A Case Study,
paper,
2014;
(https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc406345/:
accessed February 19, 2025),
University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu;
.