International Conference on Knowledge Management

The goal of this study is to explore how information is currently organized in digital cultural heritage collections in Arabian Gulf countries. it focused on Alqabas – a Kuwaiti institution with a strong reputation of early adopter of digital archiving and developer of major digital collections in Arab Gulf counties, accumulated experience in knowledge management. The mixed-methods study combined semi-structured interview of the Alqabas archive manager and in-depth content analysis of a sample of metadata records that represent items in Alqabas digital collections for accuracy, completeness, consistency, use of knowledge organization systems. The study reveals high metadata quality overall but lack of consistency for many metadata fields, explained in part by the absence of metadata creation guidelines and professional training for metadata creators. This indicates potential barriers to metadata interoperability in an aggregated environment for future projects similar to DPLA or Europeana