Metadata Committee minutes, April 13, 2009.
Present: Marshall Breeding, Zora Breeding, Nancy Boggess-Korekach, Ronee Francis, Mary Charles Lasater, Jake Schaub, Bill Walker, Pete Wilson.
The committee members have read the Committee Review Report as posted on the wiki and approved it.
We discussed the existence of the Metadata Committee and all agreed that this is one of the few places where there is exchange of information among the various departments and libraries. However, the problem we often encounter is the lack of participation by Biomedical. This causes difficulties when certain collections are added to DiscoverLibrary and Biomedical is not included in discussions about format and metadata creation. An example of this problem is the recent addition of the Surgery ICU Rounds podcasts to the DiscoverArchive. The creation of the records has fallen to Ronee and Mary Charles, whereas it would probably be better for Biomedical staff to be involved. There is a lack of resources in Special Collections and Technical Services to handle the extra work involved. This lack of resources impacts not only the podcasts in particular, but any of the collections that are sent to be included in DiscoverArchive or DiscoverLibrary. Current job descriptions have not kept up with the changes in responsibilities as far as electronic formats and metadata.
Another larger problem discussed, is the decentralization of the system which extends to the committee structure as well. And within the committees there are two disconnected lines of reporting for the committee members. Projects are brought to the committees and discussed and agreement is reached to include certain projects, but the Metadata Committee is not always informed or consulted about such projects. And yet, members of the Metadata Committee as individuals, as well as other staff in Technical Processing and LITS, are directly impacted by such additional projects. Our question is “What committee or individual makes the decisions about staffing and priorities when new projects/collections are approved?” Once again, we see a huge problem with the lack of resources, and/or the misallocation of existing resources.
DiscoverLibrary: Issues with the Global Music Archive concern the brief display in the hit list. The date field is not as useful for the GMA, and yet it is hard-coded into the brief display. If the brief display is changed for GMA, it cannot be searched with the rest of the resources. This defeats the purpose of DiscoverLibrary as a discovery tool. This issue will be discussed in today’s DiscoverLibrary Production Group meeting. Mary Charles, and Jake, are members of that Group.
Two big problems we are encountering with DiscoverLibrary are 1) the lack of adequate training on the Primo back office, and 2) lack of enough staff in LITS to handle changes and additional collections, along with the constant maintenance and fine-tuning that will be on-going.
Next meeting will be May 11.