A renaissance in library metadata? The importance of community collaboration in a digital world

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.302

Keywords:

bibliographic metadata, e-books, standards, knowledge bases, discovery

Abstract

This article summarizes a presentation given by Sarah Bull as part of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) seminar ‘Setting the Standard’ in November 2015. Representing the library community at the wide-ranging seminar, Sarah was tasked with making the topic of library metadata an engaging and informative one for a largely publisher audience. With help from co-author Amanda Quimby, this article is an attempt to achieve the same aim! It covers the importance of library metadata and standards in the supply chain and also reflects on the role of the community in successful standards development and maintenance. Special emphasis is given to the importance of quality in e-book metadata and the need for publisher and library collaboration to improve discovery, usage and the student experience. The article details the University of Birmingham experience of e-book metadata from a workflow perspective to highlight the complex integration issues which remain between content procurement and discovery.

Author Biographies

Sarah Bull, Assistant Director: Collection Management & Development Library Services, University of Birmingham

Sarah Bull is Assistant Director for Collection Management & Development in Library Services at the University of Birmingham. She has overall responsibility for the strategic development and operational management of electronic and physical library collections. Sarah is a member of a number of industry groups including the Jisc Electronic Information Resources Working Group and the COUNTER Executive Committee as well as several publisher and library technology advisory boards. She is also a past co-chair of the NISO/UKSG KBART (Knowledge Bases And Related Tools) project group.

Amanda Quimby, E-Resources and Serials Team Leader, University of Birmingham

Amanda Quimby is the e-Resources and Serials Team Leader at University of Birmingham where she is responsible for the acquisition of journals, databases and other recurrent subscriptions. Amanda and her team also manage content access, knowledge base metadata and user queries relating to access problems. Her interests include resource discoverability and the development of business models within the scholarly communications community.

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Published

2016-07-05

Issue

Vol. 29 No. 2: July 2016

Section

Case Studies

Categories

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Copyright (c) 2016 The Author(s)

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