Harvesting (OAI-PMH) and the Dublin Core Metadata scheme has led digital library

The introduction in 2001 of the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) increased interest in and awareness of metadata quality issues relevant to digital library interoperability and the use of harvested metadata to build "union catalogs " of digital information resources. Practitioners have offered wide-ranging advice to metadata authors and have suggested metrics useful for measuring the quality of shareable metadata. Is there evidence of changes in metadata practice in response to such advice and/or as a result of an increased awareness of the importance of metadata interoperability? This paper examines metadata records harvested over a six-year period by the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, and reports on quantitative and qualitative analyses of changes observed over time in shareable metadata quality