In this presentation, I aim to provide metadata definitions, purposes and applications for resource discovery and usage. I’ll also argue the importance of continuously updating, correcting, cleaning, linking, sharing and reusing metadata through an iterative, continuous and community-driven effort. I’ll outline four metadata principles, namely metadata enriching, linking, openness and filtering. I also argue that metadata creation and enhancement is a continuous process involving authors, publishers, suppliers, librarians and users – indicating a shift from metadata simplicity to enrichment.

1. Getaneh Alemu, Ph.D.
Cataloguing & Metadata Librarian
Solent University, UK
UKSG Seminar - October 25th 2022
THE PRINCIPLES OF
METADATA ENRICHING & FILTERING
TO ENHANCE RESOURCE DISCOVERY & USAGE

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OUTLINE & CONTEXT
1. What is metadata?
2. Why metadata?
3. Who creates metadata?
4. Metadata standards
5. Metadata quality
6. Metadata diversity
7. Metadata enriching & filtering
8. Conclusions

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1. WHAT IS METADATA?

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4
CONTEXT – THE INFORMATION AGE
Information revolution (Floridi, 2010)
Info glut (Wright, 2007)
Too much to know (Blair, 2010)
Big data (Borgman, 2015)
Too big to know (Weinberger, 2012)

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 The Library of Congress 170+ million information objects
 The British library 170-200 million items
 Europeana.eu 50+ million artworks, artefacts, books, films & music from
EU’s GLAMs
 The Digital Public Library of America 46+ million items
 Project Gutenberg > 60,000 free and public domain e-books
 The Internet Archive 35+ million books, 7.9 million movies, videos and TV
shows, 14 million audio files, 4 million images, 2.4 million TV clips, 237
thousand concerts, and over 682 billion web pages
CONTEXT – GROWING COLLECTIONS

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“METADATA LIBERATES KNOWLEDGE” (David Weinberger)

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No metadata

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Some metadata
Raphael, School of Athens, 1509-1511, fresco (Stanza della Segnatura, Palazzi Pontifici, Vatican)

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Artist
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino
(Raphael)
Date
Painted
c. 1509 to 1511
Medium Fresco painting
Genre History painting
Period /
Movement
High Renaissance
Dimensions 500 x 770 centimeters
Series /
Versions
Part of the Stanza della
Segnatura series of frescoes
Where Is It
Housed?
Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican
Museums, Vatican City, Italy
Source:
Source: https://artincontext.org/the-school-of-
athens-raphael/
More metadata

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10
h t t p s : / / w w w . y o u t u b e . c o m / w a t c h ? v = S m d - q 4 4 y s o M
More metadata

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Details
Title
The man without a face : the unlikely rise of Vladimir Putin
Creator
Gessen, Masha
Description
Handpicked in 1999 by the 'Family' surrounding an ailing and increasingly unpopular Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin, with very
little governmental or administrative experience beyond having served as deputy mayor of St Petersburg, seemed like the
perfect choice in the eyes of an oligarchy bent on moulding the president's successor to its own designs. Suddenly the boy
who had scrapped his way through post-war Leningrad schoolyards, dreaming of ruling the world, was a public figure, and
his popularity soared. Russia and an infatuated West were determined to see the progressive leader of their dreams, even as
with ruthless efficiency Putin dismantled the country's media, wrested control and wealth from the country's burgeoning
business class, and decimated the fragile mechanisms of democracy.
Publisher
London : Granta
Identifier
ISBN : 9781847084231
Creation Date
2014
Subject
Putin, Vladimir Vladimirovich, 1952-
Russia (Federation) -- Politics and government -- 1991-
Politics
Politicians
Biography
History
Russia
Soviet Union
Communism
Litvinenko, Alexander, 1962-2006
Contents
Format
325 pages ; 20 cm.
https://catalogue.solent.ac.uk/permalink/44SSU_INST/bslj9g/alma990096831570
204796
Metadata

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Title
Corporate manslaughter in the maritime and aviation industries
Creator
Daniels, Simon
Description
This book provides expert analysis of the application of the evolving law in Corporate
Manslaughter as it relates to the Maritime and Aviation industries. It discusses the liability
towards passengers and employees, the Prosecution of offenders Comparative analysis of
corporate manslaughter in the wider and global industry.
Series
Lloyd's practical shipping guides.
Publisher
Abingdon : Informa Law from Routledge
Identifier
ISBN : 9781317389491
Creation Date
2017
Subject
Law
Criminal law
Commercial crimes
Employer liability
Criminal liability of juristic persons -- Great Britain
Corporate manslaughter
Aeronautics, Commercial -- Law and legislation
Maritime law
Aeronautics
Costa Concordia (Cruise ship) -- Italy
Contents
accountability 10 Lessons to be shared 11 In hazard: The next generation in the High Arctic.
Format
1 online resource (xiv, 157 pages).
https://catalogue.solent.ac.uk/permalink/44SSU_INST/bslj9g/alma990096956
600204796
Metadata

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• Metadata: the process of assigning keywords, labels and
descriptions to content
• Discovery: the process of finding and selecting content
Known item search, browsing/navigation
Serendipitous discovery
• Usage: the action of utilising content
WHAT IS METADATA?

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WHAT IS METADATA?
• It is “data about data”
• Metadata = about-ness
• Metadata is what you enter into a search engine
• Metadata is your key-word in the sea of information
• Metadata is the tags, likes, dislikes, ratings, recommendations &
reviews
• Metadata is the naming of people, things, places and objects in a
database
(Gartner, 2016; Zeng & Qin, 2016; Haynes, 2018)

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WHAT IS METADATA? - W H AT, W H E N , BY W H O M …

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WHAT IS METADATA? - CONTEXT
Gebreselassie Haile 1973-04-18 54 Assela Ethiopia 10
Table: Data with no metadata
Last Name First Name Date ofBirth Weight City ofBirth Country Running Distance in
km
Gebreselassie Haile 1973-04-18 54 Assela Ethiopia 10
Table: Data with metadata

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WHAT IS METADATA? - COMPONENTS

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WHAT IS METADATA? - TYPES
Metadata Categories (based on: Hurley et al., 1999)

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2. WHY METADATA?
“Data will remain ‘dark matter’ in scholarly communication unless they are
described, curated, and made discoverable.” (Borgamn, 2015)

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METADATA FUNCTIONS
The six purposes of metadata (Haynes, 2018):
1. Resource identification and description
2. Retrieving information
3. Managing information resources
4. Managing intellectual property rights
5. Supporting e-commerce and e-government
6. Information governance

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• Find: allows users to search and find information resources for their queries
• Identify: enables users to distinguish relevant resources
• Select: enables users to choose appropriate resources that meet their requirements
• Obtain: helps users to access and utilise information resources
• Explore: helps users discover information resources.
(IFLA’s Library Reference Model’s (LRM) user tasks - Riva, Le Boeuf & Žumer, 2017).
METADATA FUNCTIONS

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“The convenience of the public is always to be set before the ease of the cataloguer.”
Cutter, 1904
W H Y M E TA DATA? S AV E S T H E T I M E O F T H E R E A D E R
1.Metadata is for use
2.Every user their metadata
3.Every metadata has its user
4.Metadata saves the time of the user
5.Metadata is a growing organism.
Based on Ranganathan, S. R. (1931). The five laws of library science. Madras: Madras Library Association.

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Cutter’s cataloguing rule :
1. To enable a person to find a book by:
a) the author
(b) the title
(c) the subject
2. To show what the library has:
(a) by a given author
(b) on a given subject
(c) in a given kind of literature
3. To assist in the choice of a book:
(a) as to its edition
(b) as to its bibliographic characteristics (such as genre, language or format).
WHY METADATA? SAV ES T H E T I M E O F T H E R EA D ER

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WHY METADATA? SAV ES T H E T I M E O F T H E R EA D ER
Users expecting
• Instantaneous
• 24/7
• Seamless
• Triangulated/complete
• Full-text
• Convenient access

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Metadata is the raison d'être for galleries, libraries, archives, publishers, etc
Ensuring print and electronic resources are discoverable and usable by users
Supports the circulation, acquisition and interlibrary loan functions of a library
Central for the preservation and access of cultural heritage objects
(Alemneh, 2009; Alemu et al., 2012; Alemu & Stevens, 2015; Anderson et al., 2009; Baker, 1998; Baker, 2000; Caplan, 2009; Dekkers, 2002;
Dekkers & Weibel, 2002; Duval et al., 2002; Gartner, 2016; Gartner, 2008; Haynes, 2018; Lagoze, 2010; Lavoie & Gartner, 2005; Zeng &
Chan, 2006; Zeng & Qin, 2016)
WHY METADATA?

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“Metadata plays a critical role in the function of any discovery service. Search, relevancy
ranking, faceted refinement, and recording grouping function (FRBR) all respond to the
metadata present.”
Source: (Han & Weathers, 2016, p, 275 in Varnum, 2016).
WHY METADATA?

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WHY METADATA?
Source: https://www.bic.org.uk/

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3. WHO CREATES METADATA?

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WHO CREATES METADATA?

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• Consider users as proactive creators, collaborators and partners
• Consider the cultural and linguistic context of users
• Keep the metadata up-to-date and relevant to reflect users needs
WHO CREATES METADATA?

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• Publications
• Subject headings
• Authority lists
• Encoding standards
• Publishers databases
• Machine-generated metadata
• User-generated metadata
SOURCES OF METADATA

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4. METADATA STANDARDS

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(Alemu, 2014)
METADATA STANDARDS

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(Alemu, 2014)

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(Alemu, 2014)

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Source: http://jennriley.com/metadatamap/seeingstandards.pdf

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Metadata standards- Dublin Core (DC)
Dublin Core
Field
Dublin Core Definition EncodingSchema Is it mandatory? Is it
repeatable?
URI
dc:title ‘A name givento the resource.’ Unstructured entry. Use titleof
work.
Yes Yes http://purl.org/dc/
elements/1.1/title
dc:subject ‘The topic of the resource.’ No http://purl.org/dc/
elements/1.1/subject
dc:subject ‘Subject can bekeywords, key phrases, or classification codes.
Recommendedbest practice isto use a controlled vocabulary.’
dcterms:LCSH No
dc:subject dcterms:MESH No
dc:subject dcterms:DDC No
dc:subject dcterms:LCC No
dc:subject dcterms:UDC No
dc:description No
dc:date ‘A point or period of timeassociated with an eventin the lifecycle of the
resource.’
Yes
dc:type No http://purl.org/dc/
elements/1.1/type
dc:type ‘The nature orgenre of the resource.’ dcterms:DCMIType No
dc:format No
dc:format dcterms:IMT No
dc:identifier dcterms:URI Yes
dc:identifier dcterms:ISBN No
dc:identifier dcterms:ISSN IdentifierISSN
dc:identifier dcterms:ISMN IdentifierISMN
dc:language Language

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Vocabulary Encoding
Schemes
DCMIType , DDC , IMT , LCC , LCSH , MESH , NLM , TGN , UDC
Syntax Encoding Schemes Box , ISO3166 , ISO639-2 , ISO639-3 , Period , Point , RFC1766 , RFC3066 ,
RFC4646 , RFC5646 , URI , W3CDTF
METADATA SCHEMAS

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METADATA STANDARDS- SUBJEC T HEADINGS
Code Type Description
BISAC codes SUBJECT Book Industry Study Group Codes
EUROVOC SUBJECT A multilingual thesaurus maintained by thePublications Office of the European Union
FAST SUBJECT FAST (Faceted Application of Subject Terminology)
– OCLC
GND NAMES_AND_SUBJECTS Subject and Names headings for books, serials, andother types of material in the German
National Library
JURIVOC SUBJECT JURIVOC is the legal thesaurus of the FederalCourt and former Federal Insurance
Court inSwitzerland
LCGFT SUBJECT Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms
LCMPT SUBJECT Library of Congress Medium of PerformanceThesaurus for Music (LCMPT)
LCDGT SUBJECT
LCNAMES NAME The authorised form of the name of a person responsible for a work or a group
responsible for awork or a meeting, conference, symposium, etc.
LCSH SUBJECT Subject headings for books, serials, and othertypes of material in the Library of
Congress
MESH SUBJECT Headings authorised by the National Library ofMedicine
THEMA Subject THEMA Subject Categories

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5. METADATA QUALITY

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• Consistency
• User Centredness
• Completeness
• Credibility
• Up-to-date-ness
• Multilingualism
• Interoperability
(Duval et al., 2002; Haynes, 2018; Meadows, 2019; Zeng & Qin, 2016)
M E TA DATA Q UA L I T Y

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Common issues include:
 Invalid fields, undefined sub-fields and missing indicators
 Issues with non-repeatable fields
 Non-well-formatted values
 Incomplete or brief records with missing fields
 Incorrect or inaccurate data in fields
 Data recorded incorrectly in fields (spelling, capitalisation,
punctuation etc.)
 Missing subject headings
(Kiraly, 2019; NAG, 2020)
M E TA DATA Q UA L I T Y

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NISO (2020) recommendation
• Use clear, consistent titles and sub-titles (do not add extraneous information
in the title)
• Use name authorities (LCAF, Virtual International Authority File (VIAF),
International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI), ORCID or Wikidata)
• Dates (creation, publication, copyright, package, version, update dates; use
ISO 8601)
• Book identifiers (ISBN, ISSN, DOI, LCCN, OCN)
• Subjects (LCSH, THEMA, BISAC, FAST, GND, etc)
NISO (2020). E-book Bibliographic Metadata Requirements in the Sale, Publication, Discovery, Delivery, and Preservation Supply Chain A Recommended Practice of the National
Information Standards Organization. Retrieved fromhttps://groups.niso.org/apps/group_public/download.php/23850/NISO_RP-29-202X_E-
Book_Metadata_Draft_for_Public_Comment.pdf
M E TA DATA Q UA L I T Y

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RECOMMENDED/ESSENTIAL METADATA ELEMENTS
NAG (2020) also showed that respondents
consider the following metadata elements
essential:
 Title information
 Creators from authorised
lists
 Resource type and format
 Identifiers (such as ISBN)
 Edition statement
 Publication information
 Physical description
(including page
numbers)
 Series, if applicable
 Electronic access URL for
e-books
 Item class mark
 Order information
(NAG, 2020)

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6. METADATA DIVERSITY

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• Human beings, by nature, do not always agree on a single about-ness, interpretation and classification
of things (Shirky, 2008; Weinberger, 2007).
• Metadata is affected by socio-cultural, linguistic, and political factors (Bowker & Star, 1999)
• Metadata is an approximation to the things it represents (Gartner, 2016)
• “Today’s category easily becomes tomorrow’s embarrassment” (Weinberger, 2007)
• Each standard and each category valorises some point of view and silences another” (Bowker and Star,
1999)
METADATA DIVERSITY

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 "The solution to the information overload problem is to create more metadata“ (Weinberger, 2007)
 “If a library is a growing organism, it follows that the library catalogue will also be a growing one. The rate
of growth of the catalogue may be said to be six times the rate of growth of the number of books, as a
book requires six entries on average” (Ranganathan, 1957, p.444)
• Metadata diversity better conforms to users’ needs
• Metadata enriching addresses this problem by allowing multiple metadata agents – including authors,
publishers, librarians, machines and users
METADATA DIVERSITY

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7. METADATA ENRICHING &
FILTERING

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M E TADATA E N R I CH I NG & F I LT E R I NG

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User search behaviours actions
Users search and browsing behaviours
• Non-linear
• Iterative
• Dynamic
• Evolving (Bates, 1989)
Users employ various techniques
• Searching
• Browsing
• Footnote chasing
• Citation searching
• Journal run
• Area scanning (Bates, 1989)
A berrypicking, evolving search model (Bates, 1989)

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SIMPLE search is the predominantly preferred method which accounts
for 95% of the searches, followed remotely by ADVANCED search
only 4%. And a very small fraction of VOICE searches (a new feature).
Source: Solent University Primo Discovery
User search behaviours actions

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Tip: # of words in Search
#words %
1 29.47%
2 38.38%
3 16.80%
4 6.97%
5 3.86%
6 1.26%
7 0.93%
8 0.65%
9 0.31%
10 0.12%
11 0.23%
12 0.21%
13 0.13%
14 0.15%
15 0.29%
16 0.08%
18 0.03%
20 0.06%
21 0.03%
26 0.05%
Source: Solent University Primo Discovery

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Number of words in a retail site search query Q1 2017
Note(s): Worldwide; January 2013 to March 19, 2017; 1.5 billion search queries
Further information regarding this statistic can be found on page 8.
Source(s): SLI Systems; MarketingCharts; ID 744854
56%
26%
11%
4%
1% 1% 1%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
1 word 2 words 3 words 4 words 5 words 6 words 7+ words*
Share
of
searches
by
word
length

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Average number of search terms for online search queries in the United States as of January 2020
Online search query size in the United States 2020, by number of keywords
Note(s): United States; January 2020
Further information regarding this statistic can be found on page 8.
Source(s): Keyword Discovery; ID 269740
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
40%
45%
One word Two words Three words Four words Five words Six words Seven words Eight words Nine words Ten or more
words
Share
of
searches
2

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U S A G E A N D D I S C O V E R Y – FA I L E D S E A R C H E S
Search String
9781843920885
Dark Matter: A History of the Afrofuture
Downcast eyes:
Eyes as Big as Plates
Hollywood by Hollywood: The Backstudio Picture and the Mystique of Making Movies Steven Cohan
Increased ocean temperature and its consequences
Jia Aili
Jun’ichirō Tanizaki. The Key (1956
Sloman foundation of economics
Stardust Hermit
Taylor, N., 2011, Brilliant business writing: How to inspire, engage and persuade through words. 2nd edition Pearson/Prentice Hall
The Futurist Cookbook
The Nine Types of Leader james
The Optimum Power Load: A Simple and Powerful Tool for Testing and Training
about charyties
about chatyes
catheterisation nursing
cathterisation nursing
cryptocurrency price prediction
diagnostic tests for lung cancer
dutton dukerich
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/hollywood-by-hollywood-9780190865771?cc=gb%26lang=en%26
indications for urinary catheterisation

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METADATA TIPS
 Create U S E R - C E N T R E D ( U S A B L E ) , S T R U C T U R E D , S P E C I F I C , C O N S I S T E N T,
A C C U R AT E & C O M P L E T E M E TA D ATA
 Apply metadata S TA N D A R D S (structured, in-depth & granular)
 Keep the metadata E N R I C H E D , I N C L U S I V E & U S E R - C E N T R E D
 Save the T I M E of users and keep them happy through metadata 
 Enhance D I S C O V E R Y through metadata
 Keep maximising U S A G E & I M P A C T (ROI) through metadata

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8. CONCLUSIONS
Metadata that is ENRICHED, LINKED, OPEN and
FILTERED drives usage of resources.
(Alemu, 2014)
Without metadata “the ever-increasing mass of information is mere chaos” (Barbara B.
Tillett, 2000)

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Bibliography
Alemu, G., & Stevens, B. (2015). An emergent theory of digital library metadata: Enrich then filter. Waltham, Massachusetts: Chandos Publishing.
Alemu, G. (2014) A Theory of Digital Library Metadata: the emergence of enriching and filtering, PhD Thesis, University of Portsmouth,
https://researchportal.port.ac.uk/en/studentTheses/a-theory-of-digital-librarymetadata.
Alemu, G. (2018) Metadata Enrichment for Digital Heritage: users as cocreators. International Information & Library Review, 50 (2), 142–56.
Alemu, G. A., Stevens, B. and Ross, P. (2012) Towards a Conceptual Framework for User-driven Semantic Metadata Interoperability in Digital Libraries: a
social constructivist approach, New Library World, 113 (1/2), 38–54, doi:10.1108/03074801211199031.
Alemu, G. A., Stevens, B., Ross, P. and Chandler, J. (2012) The Social Space of Metadata: perspectives of LIS academics and postgraduates on
standards-based and socially constructed metadata approaches, Journal of Library Metadata, 12 (4), 311–44,
doi:10.1080/19386389.2012.735523.
Alemu, G. A., Stevens, B., Ross, P. and Chandler, J. (2014) Toward an Emerging Principle of Linking Socially-constructed Metadata, Journal of Library
Metadata, 14 (2),
103–29, doi:10.1080/19386389.2014.914775.
Alemu, G. A. and Stevens, B. (2015) An Emergent Theory of Digital Library Metadata: enrich then filter, Chandos Publishing.
Blair, A. (2010) Too Much to Know: managing scholarly information before the modern age, Yale University Press.
Borgman, C. (2015) Big Data, Little Data, No Data: scholarship in the networked world, MIT Press.
Floridi, L. (2010). Information: A very short introduction. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Gartner, R. (2016). Metadata: Shaping knowledge from antiquity to the semantic web. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
Haynes, D. (2018) Metadata for Information Management and Retrieval: understanding metadata and its use, Facet Publishing.

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Bibliography
Hider, P. (2018) Information Resource Description: creating and managing metadata, Facet Publishing.
Kiraly, P. (2019) Validating 126 Million MARC records. In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Digital Access to Textual Cultural
Heritage (DATeCH2019), Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 161–8, https://doi.org/10.1145/3322905.3322929.
Meadows, A. (2019) Better Metadata Could Help Save the World!, Scholarly Kitchen, https://scholarly kitchen.sspnet.org/2019/06/11/better-metadata-
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Metadata 20/20 (2019) https://metadata2020.org.
Parrucci, J. (2020) Times Tags: metadata at The New York Times, 1851–today, paper presented at ISKO UK Meetup, www.iskouk.org/event-4023481.
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Weinberger, D. (2005) Tagging and Why It Matters, http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/sites/cyber.law.harvard.edu/files/07-WhyTaggingMatters.pdf.
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Wright, A. (2007) Glut: mastering information through the ages, Cornell University Press.
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Zeng, M. L., & Qin, J. (2016). Metadata (2nd ed.). London: Facet Publishing.

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THANK YOU!