The design of metadata for the Digital Museum Initiative in Taiwan
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520210447868 |
| Date | 01 October 2002 |
| Pages | 295-306 |
| Published date | 01 October 2002 |
| Author | Chao‐chen Chen,Hsueh‐hua Chen,Kuang‐hua Chen,Jieh Hsiang |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
The design of metadata
for the Digital Museum
Initiative in Taiwan
Chao-chen Chen
Hsueh-hua Chen
Kuang-hua Chen and
Jieh Hsiang
Introduction
With the rapid growth of the Internet,
research on digital libraries and digital
museums has received world-wide attention.
Taiwan, in tune with the rest of the developed
countries, has also been enthusiastically
embracing digitisation efforts.
Among the major institutions in Taiwan
that are currently digitising their cultural
heritage collections are the National Palace
Museum, National Museum of History,
National Museum of Natural Science,
National Central Library, National Taiwan
University and Academia Sinica (Chang,
1999). Their primary tasks are to digitise their
own unique collections and present them on
the Web in a uniform way. In order to
organise this vast amount and variety of
cultural data in an easily retrievable manner,
it is imperative to design a suitable metadata
format. From the user point of view, a digital
library/museum should at least contain the
basic functions of retrieval and browsing, as
well as links to other related Web resources. A
digital library/museum with a large volume of
data usually requires a database management
system to manage its metadata, digital
objects, and the links, etc. In this paper we
describe an attempt to develop a Chinese
metadata format, the Metadata Interchange
for Chinese Information (MICI), and an
XML/metadata management system,
Metalogy. Both were developed under the
sponsorship of the Digital Museum Initiative
(DMI), funded by the National Science
Council of the Republic of China.
The Digital Museum Initiative of Taiwan
In order to improve the quality of research in
the humanities and social sciences, the National
Science Council (NSC) of Taiwan launched a
programme called ``Greeting a New Millennium
± A Cross-century Technology Development
Programme with Concern for the Humanities''
in 1998. The DMI was part of this programme,
with the mission of building digital data from
cultural artefacts and using it to develop digital
The authors
Chao-chen Chen is an Associate Professor in the
Department of Adult and Continuing Education,
Hsueh-hua Chen is a Professor and Kuang-hua Chen is
an Associate Professor, both in the Department of Library
and Information Science and Jieh Hsiang is a Professor in
the Department of Computer Science and Information
Engineering, all at the National Taiwan University,
Taipei, Taiwan.
Keywords
Data processing, Museums, Libraries, Taiwan
Abstract
Metadata plays a crucial role in a digital library/museum
environment. However, the development of metadata is
not an easy task. Its formulation starts with analysing the
attributes of collections as well as understanding the user
information needs and information seeking behaviour.
The issue of interoperability also needs to be considered
in terms of both semantics and syntax. This paper
discusses issues related to the development of metadata
in Taiwan. It describes the development process of a
Chinese metadata system, Metadata Interchange for
Chinese Information (MICI), and an XML/metadata
management system, Metalogy. Both were developed
under the Digital Museum Initiative sponsored by the
National Science Council of Taiwan.
Electronic access
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The current issue and full text archive of this journal is
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http://www.emeraldinsight.com/1468-4527.htm
Refereed article received 13 March 2002.
Approved for publication 15 March 2002.
The work described in this paper was partially
sponsored by the National Science Council of the
Republic of China under the NSC grant number
NSC88-2745-P-002-007 and NSC-89-2750-P-
002-013.
295
Online Information Review
Volume 26 .Number 5 .2002 .pp. 295±306
#MCB UP Limited .ISSN 1468-4527
DOI 10.1108/14684520210447868
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