SissiLinked Items E/R Model Metadata Standards Metadata Alignment Theoretical Model Conceptual Model Data Description RDF

Metadata Standards

As introduced in the Item section, each object is equipped with a description provided by a trustworthy institution. This description is usually expressed in the form of standardized metadata. For this reason, we decided to introduce here an analysis of our items that includes information about typology, provider, country of the provenance and metadata standards used by the provider. When aggregators or institutions did not specify the employed standard, we used a standard of our choice that we thought would better suit the description of the item.

A definition

Metadata is the backbone of digital curation. Without it a digital resource may be irretrievable, unidentifiable or unusable. Metadata is descriptive or contextual information which refers to or is associated with another object or resource. A metadata standard will normally support a number of defined functions, and will specify elements which make these possible. This usually takes the form of a structured set of elements which describe the information resource and assists in the identification, location and retrieval of it by users, while facilitating content and access management.
Sarah Higgins, Aberystwyth University (February 2007)


Item Provider Type of provider Country Standard
Painting Google Arts & Culture Aggregator Austria CCO*
Carriage Europeana EDM
Dress Kunsthistorisches Museum Museum CDWA LITE*
Lithograph Hungarian N. Museum Hungary CIDOC CRM*
Photograph National Portrait Gallery Archive UK ISAD(G)
Music British Library METS
Movie ICBSA Library Italy UNIMARC
Anthropology Book Opac Sebina ISBD
Style Book THE MET Library United States MARC21
Newspaper Bibliothèque National de France France DCMI



* When providers did not specify the employed standard, we used a standard of our choice that would better suit the description of the item.