Pulling it all together: use of METS in RLG cultural materials service
| Published date | 01 March 2004 |
| Pages | 65-68 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/07378830410524503 |
| Date | 01 March 2004 |
| Author | Merrilee Proffitt |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Pulling it all together:
use of METS in RLG
cultural materials
service
Merrilee Proffitt
RLG cultural materials (RCM) is a virtual
collection of cultural works and artifacts from
RLG member institutions, in the form of an
online database of digital multimedia
representations (or ``surrogates'') of works and
their corresponding textual descriptions. The
world-class collections come from an expanding
alliance of more than 60 RLG member
institutions that includes museums, libraries,
archives, and historical societies. Launched in
2001, this unique assemblage of materials is an
exceptional database for use in teaching and
learning. Examples of the types of materials
represented in RCM include: maps,
photographs, objects, art, sound, and film[1].
Currently (October 2003), the service
contains 205,723 works in 82 collections
contributed by 26 institutions. Individual
``works'' can be an image, a video, a group of
images, or a book ± ranging from the simple to
the highly complex.
Some of the works represented in RCM are
simple to express in digital form. Many works
consist of a digital image of a single photograph
± these are represented by a single digital file,
and no structural metadata are required to
model the work. This work may be
accompanied by descriptive metadata,
represented in a MARC record, by a Dublin
Core record, by a record constructed according
to the VRA Core, or by a home-grown or locally
defined item-level description. These simple
works can be represented in a straightforward
manner, and no navigational apparatus is
required.
When many different digital files represent a
work ± that is, where structural metadata are
required to model the object ± a different
approach is required. RCM contains not only
works represented by a single file, but also
works such as books, sheet music, and other
page-turned objects. For example, 32,000
photographs represent 859 works from the
Library of Congress's South Pacific
Ethnographic Archives. The single work
representing the Ellesmere Chaucer
contributed by the Huntington Library consists
of over 200 images of illuminated manuscript
The author
Merrilee Proffitt is Program Officer for Access to Research
Resources, RLG, Mountain View, California, USA.
Keywords
Online cataloguing, Standards
Abstract
RLG has used METS for a particular application, that is as a
wrapper for structural metadata. When RLG cultural
materials was launched, there was no single way to deal with
``complex digital objects''. METS provides a standard means
of encoding metadata regarding the digital objects
represented in RCM, and METS has now been fully integrated
into the workflow for this service.
Electronic access
The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is
available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0737-8831.htm
Received 7 October 2003
Revised 3 November 2003
Accepted 7 November 2003
65
Library Hi Tech
Volume 22 .Number 1 .2004 .pp. 65-68
#Emerald Group Publishing Limited .ISSN 0737-8831
DOI 10.1108/07378830410524503
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