Semantic Metadata Interoperability in Digital Libraries: A Constructivist Grounded Theory Approach

This paper highlights problems of semantic metadata interoperability in digital libraries. The prevalence of a plethora of standards and a lack of semantic interoperability can partly be attributed to the absence of theoretical foundations to underpin current metadata approaches and solutions. Contemporary metadata standards and interoperability approaches are mainly top-down and hierarchical, and, hence, fail to take into account the diversity of cultural, linguistic and local perspectives that abound. To overcome this, it is proposed that a social constructivist approach should be adopted by libraries and other cultural heritage institutions when archiving information objects that need to be enriched with metadata, thereby reflecting the diversity of views and perspectives that can be held by their users. Following on Charmaz [1], a constructivist grounded theory method is employed to investigate how library professionals and library users view metadata standards, collaborative metadata approaches and semantic web technologies in relation to semantic metadata interoperability. This method allows an active interplay between the researcher and the participants who can be either Library and Information Science researchers, librarians or library users. Following the completion first phase of data collection, preliminary reflections are presented, with emphasis on how Library and Information Science professionals view current metadata practices, especially as used in academic library contexts. However, as the study is ongoing one, it is too early to generate theoretical categories and conclusions