Middle East and North Africa before 1860

Metadata overview

The metadata schemas used by Elsewhereonline and The University of Melbourne are different. The Elsewhereonline metadata is of a higher granularity than the elements that will be required by Melbourne. The entry of data will of necessity need to be at the lower level of granularity (the Melbourne schema) and this will need to be mapped (i.e. cross-walked) to the Elsewhereonline elements.

To facilitate this the Melbourne schema is encoded as an xml document with an XML Schema Definition (xsd).

Elsewhereonline metadata

The metadata elements for particular materials are determined by the image classification selected. This selection will bring up one of four templates. There are 30 image classification categories. The category that will be used by Melbourne for all the book plates is 'Print'. This will lead to the 'Artwork / Object' template.

The structure of the collections is that of photo album being the 'parent' which then contains photographs as the 'children'. This allows the children to inherit some of the parent's attributes.

The photo album elements are:

Default:
• Short name
• Title
• Description
• Select a default image
• Photograph
• Body text
• Related item(s)
• Allow discussion on this item [Default: enabled]

Image classification:
• Image classification [Melbourne default: Print]
• Object type [Melbourne default: plates, illustrations]
• Artist/Creator/Architect/Planner
• Collection/Location [Melbourne default: University of Melbourne Special Collections]
• Media/Materials [Melbourne default: paper]
• Date created/Constructed
• Dimensions

The terms selected for the Object Type and Media/Materials for both the photo album and the photograph are taken from the Art & Architecture Thesaurus

The photograph elements are:

Default:
• Short name
• Title
• Description
• Photograph
• Body text
• Related item(s)
• Allow discussion on this item [Default: enabled]

Image classification:
• Image classification [Melbourne default: Print]
• Object type [Melbourne default: plates, illustrations]
• Artist/Creator/Architect/Planner
• Collection/Location [Melbourne default: University of Melbourne Special Collections]
• Media/Materials [Melbourne default: engravings, print]
• Date created/Constructed
• Dimensions

For specific images if the method of engraving is known, for example an aquatint then this would be added to the Media/Materials list as an additional term.

Both 'photo album' and 'photograph' are made publicly available under a Creative Commons licence with the following conditions: Attribution, Noncommercial, No Derivative Works.

The University of Melbourne metadata schema

The schema chosen by the University to describe these resources is based on CDWA Lite. A subset of elements was used. The subset was informed by the core elements of the schema plus the Descriptive metadata guidelines for RLG cultural materials and Cataloguing Cultural Objects: a guide to describing cultural works and their images. As this was seen as the first 'cultural collection' to be described in this manner future interoperability was also considered.

The University element set xml instance is available. The xsd is available at the CDWALite site.

This work is still in progress, therefore, changes are inevitable.