Papers: Metadata Models, Services, and Ethics

This paper explores criteria for using the DCMIType "Service". It does this by illustrating examples relevant to linguists and miniorty language communities. It further then contextualizes the discussion by applying the Dublin Core based application profile use by the Open Languages Archiving Community.

Conceptual models are a key component to holistically understanding data and using it in end-user applications. They provide an understandable roadmap for exploring, visualizing, and surfacing information. Library reference models serve a similar purpose by describing component parts of bibliographic materials that can help users find materials that fit their specific information needs. This work presents OCLC’s thinking in how to adapt the traditional Works, Expression, Manifestation, and Item (WEMI) model in WorldCat based on experiments with WorldCat bibliographic records.

The process of creating and stewarding descriptive metadata is often approached with a focus on standardization. However, utilizing an approach grounded in care ethics to construct a relationship between the metadata creator and the people who are the creators and subjects of the archival materials can provide better descriptive metadata. The improvement is focused on allowing digital archives to give people appearing in the archive the respect and attention they deserve, as well as providing important historical information to users. This paper details a concept-in-practice discussion of the employment of an approach grounded in care ethics on the remediation of a collection with harmful legacy descriptive metadata.