The State of Preservation Metadata Practices in North Carolina Repositories

Grand metadata schemas and detailed technology applications may well be ideal for the effective preservation of digital images, but they may not be practical for the vast majority of cultural heritage repositories. If resource-challenged organizations do not receive assistance in scaling these efforts to meet their available resources, hundreds of repositories may waste valuable assets on ineffective measures, or they may do nothing at all. The aim of this study is to determine where North Carolina repositories are in their efforts to digitize collections; how they are incorporating preservation metadata, if at all; and to solicit their assessment of the Metadata for the Administration and Preservation of Digital Images (MAPDI) schema created by the North Carolina Exploring Cultural Heritage Online Preservation Metadata Working Group. The accompanying MAPDI database tool was expanded to include the capture of collection-level Dublin Core discovery metadata as well as preservation metadata. Results of the survey indicate that smaller repositories may be in need of far greater assistance in their preservation efforts, and that they frequently have to place practicality before perfect practice