Papers: Metadata Quality & BIBFRAME

The UNT Libraries manage digital collections comprising more than 4 million items, creating challenges for assessing and improving descriptive metadata quality. Previously, we introduced an iterative model called EPIC (evaluate, prioritize, identify, correct) to guide ongoing assessment work. This paper focuses on changes to infrastructure that have been introduced to support each step in this framework as a case study for ways that other organizations might envision or plan similar work.

The One-to-One Principle of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative aims to ensure distinct descriptions for conceptually different entities, such as originals and their digital versions. This study examines the application of the principle in five Catalan university repositories with special collections, analysing a random sample of 100 records across fields such as type, format, date, author, source, relation, and publisher. The results reveal frequent violations of the principle, mainly due to the blending of metadata for originals and digitised versions and inconsistencies in field usage. These findings underscore both the theoretical and practical challenges of applying Dublin Core correctly, and the need for clearer guidance and better metadata practices to support semantic clarity and interoperability.

Currently, many countries are revising their cataloging rules based on the Resource Description and Access (RDA) standard. However, in this process, there has been insufficient discussion regarding the representation of the unique bibliographic characteristics of old materials. This study examines the bibliographic elements necessary to describe the distinctive attributes of old materials. Furthermore, it proposes a method for incorporating these elements into bibliographic data creation by extending the BIBFRAME bibliographic structure. By moving beyond traditional unit record approaches, this extended BIBFRAME-based model facilitates the semantic linking of bibliographic values inherent in old materials.

This paper examines how the concept of bibliographic families and derivative relationships, foundational to modern bibliographic models like FRBR and BIBFRAME, manifest within Wikidata's community-driven knowledge base. Through systematic analysis of over 2.2 million creative works across audiovisual, musical, literary, and video game domains, we explore the emergent patterns of relationships between works. Our findings reveal that while traditional WEMI relationships represent only 2% of the identified connections, a rich ecosystem of other relationship types dominates the descriptive landscape. The research provides insights into how non-professional contributors intuitively approach complex bibliographic relationships, suggesting opportunities for more flexible, user-centered bibliographic models that better accommodate contemporary transmedia content ecosystems.