Trends in Metadata Practices: A Longitudinal Study of Collection Federation

With the increasing focus on interoperability for distributed digital content, resource developers need to take into consideration how they will contribute to large federated collections, potentially at the national and international level. At the same time, their primary objectives are usually to meet the needs of their own institutions and user communities. This tension between local practices and needs and the more global potential of digital collections has been an object of study for the IMLS Digital Collections and Content (IMLS DCC) project. Our practical aim has been to provide integrated access to over 160 IMLS-funded digital collections through a centralized collection registry and metadata repository. During the course of development, the research team has investigated how collections and items can best be represented to meet the needs of local resource developers and aggregators of distributed content, as well as the diverse user communities they may serve. This paper presents results from a longitudinal analysis of IMLS DCC development trends between 2003 and 2006. Changes in metadata applications have not been pronounced. However, multi-scheme use has become less common, and use of Dublin Core remains high, even as recognition of its limitations grows.IMLS LG-02-02-0281published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe