Evaluation of the accessibility of archival cartographic documents in digital libraries
| Date | 10 December 2018 |
| Published date | 10 December 2018 |
| Pages | 1062-1081 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/EL-06-2017-0130 |
| Author | Marta Kuzma,Albina Moscicka |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
Evaluation of the accessibility of
archival cartographic documents
in digital libraries
Marta Kuzma and Albina Moscicka
Military University of Technology, Warsaw, Poland
Abstract
Purpose –This paper aims to present the authors’attempts to evaluate the access to archival maps
available in digital libraries.Its aim was to pinpoint the factors determining the effectiveness of access to old
maps and to evaluate which Polish libraries provide resources in such a way as to give the users the best
chance of findingthe materials necessary for their research.
Design/methodology/approach –The presented research focussed on archival documents from
academic libraries accessible from the Polish Digital Libraries Federation and available from Europeana
Collections. The evaluationcriteria were established along with features that determinethe level of difficulty
of access to datadescribing archival documents. The researchtook into account the way of recording the data
about archival documents in metadata. The authorshave also analysed the quantity of available resources
and the consistencyof metadata record.
Findings –The results of the research have demonstratedthat one-third of the analysed libraries deserve a
positiveevaluation. The digital library of the Warsaw University and the JagiellonianDigital Library received
the best scores in terms of the description of archival documents.Considering the number of resources, the
JagiellonianDigital Library and the Digital Library of the University of Wrocław are positivelydistinguished.
Originality/value –The method of evaluating the access to archival maps has been developed. The
criteria and features necessaryfor this evaluation and the way of their interpretation have also been defined.
The future goalsleading to the improvement of the access to the archival maps have been also presented.
Keywords Digital libraries, Metadata, Europeana, Archival maps,
Polish Digital Libraries Federation, Raster maps
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
The Polish Digital Libraries Federation (PDLF) (2018) is an internet service whose main
purpose is to collect, process and share online information about the collections of Polish
scientific and cultural institutions (Lewandowska and Werla, 2010). The PDLF operates on
the basis of a daily updated database of objects made available on the Web by Polish
scientific and cultural institutions. Users who search this database receive links to 4.4
million objects stored in digital libraries that are currently co-operating with the PDLF.
PDLF resources are availablefrom Europeana (2018).
Europeana is often presented in public as a portal that provides access to millions of
objects from all kinds of cultural heritage communities (Doerr et al., 2010,Purday, 2009). It
enables users to find digital cultural works made available by cultural institutions
throughout the European Union. Currently, Europeana provides access to a collection of
more than 50 million books, periodicals, video clips, maps, photographs and digital
documents from libraries,archives, museums and audio-visual archivesin Europe.
Effective use of cultural heritage resources and information from PDLF and Europeana
gives the prerequisites and challenges for multidisciplinary research and cross-sectoral
EL
36,6
1062
Received12 June 2017
Revised14 November 2017
1 January2018
6 March2018
19April 2018
8 May2018
9 July2018
Accepted11 July 2018
TheElectronic Library
Vol.36 No. 6, 2018
pp. 1062-1081
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0264-0473
DOI 10.1108/EL-06-2017-0130
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0264-0473.htm
cooperation. These resources are an unlimited source of knowledge not only constituting
value in themselves but also providing data for many new studies, including
interdisciplinarystudies of the past.
To find an object in digital library successfully, a metadata should be provided. Like
the catalogue in a traditional library, metadata are the key to resource discovery and to
the use of any collected document. However, due to their digital nature and way of
usage, they differ from their analogue counterparts. Nowadays, metadata are specified
in international standards of description (DCMI, 2018)thatdefinetheelementswhich
should be present in the description of an electronic copy of an object to achieve the
basic characterization and meet the requirements of electronic documents (Mo
scicka,
2015). This solution enables the integration of scattered sources from various
institutions and countries. Research on platforms integrating digital library services
(Kao and Wu, 2012), different types of institutions content (Autere and Vakkari, 2011)
and aggregating metadata records from multiple unrelated repositories (Lin et al., 2017)
is often undertaken.
The growth of digital library collections requires high-quality metadata to make
materials collected by libraries fully accessible and to enable their integration and
sharing between institutions. Consequently, three main metadata quality criteria have
been defined: accuracy, consistency and completeness (Park, 2009;Park and Tosaka,
2010). Metadata accuracy is defined as the degree of conformity of the values saved in
metadata records with the characteristics of the described object (Stvilia et al., 2007).
Metadata consistency consists of semantic (the same values represent similar concepts)
and structural (the degree of conformity of the same structure in representing
information in certain metadata elements) consistency (Park, 2009;Bruce and Hillmann,
2004). Metadata completeness is the degree to which objects are described using all
metadata elements (Moen et al., 1998a). Different aspects of metadata quality can also
be defined as accessibility, accuracy, availability, compactness, comprehensiveness,
content, consistency, usability, etc. (Moen et al., 1998b). This list tells us where errors in
metadata occur, which can result in hindering or completely disabling access to
materials available through a digital library.
Therefore, the formulation and implementation of metadata quality requirements
are extremely important for developing interoperability in the area of digital libraries.
To achieve that, different metadata systems need to move towards integration that
should be based on the standardization, normalization and enrichment of metadata
schemas through the application of common terminologies, vocabularies,
classifications, etc. (Solodovnik, 2011). To reach an acceptable level of interoperability,
digital libraries, together with the effective description of the resources content in the
form of metadata, should develop technical metadata, interfaces, standards of
information exchange, etc. (Iannella et al., 1996). Moreover, the effective description of
the resources content in metadata must take into account the specificity of the objects
that are collected and described by the digital library. This refers mainly to special
collections, which contain old prints, manuscripts, music or graphics collections, as
well as cartographic collections.
Archival maps were always presentin the libraries. In the digital age, geographical space
has begun to exist in librariesin two aspects, namely, old maps’collections and a geographic
reference of sources other thancartographic materials. The possibilities of searching library
collections with the use of geographic dataand improving access to the archives have been
developed for years. Literature discusses solutions connected with the extraction of
geographic references from historicaldata (Clough et al., 2011), as well as with the access to
Accessibility
of archival
documents in
DLs
1063
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