The Catholic University of America

This week-long course is designed to introduce students and information professionals to the principles of information organization and standards, methods, and best practices for organizing Internet resources.The course focuses on metadata applications and project management. We will learn how metadata are used to describe and organize text, image, sound, video, and other non-print information objects. We will also examine the roles of metadata in the creation and management of online catalogs, digital collections, digital libraries, digital repositories, and institutional repositories. 

Active learning, reflective learning, and collaborative learning will be achieved through lectures, presentations, exercises, discussions and visits to projects in the Washington Metropolitan region. Blackboard and PBwiki will be used to support learning and teaching. Information professionals from the Government Printing Office, the Library of Congress, the National Library of Medicine, the Smithsonian, and the Washington Research Library Consortium will share their experience with metadata implementation and project management with the class. We will also visit several projects at these organizations. Details of presentations and site visits will be added as visit plans are finalized.

Course Objectives

At the conclusion of the course students will be able to

• Understand issues related to the description and organization of print and non-print information objects.
• Explain several types of metadata and their applications in online catalogs, digital collections, and institutional repositories.
• Discuss issues related to metadata applications and implementations.
• Describe the process and components of project management for digitization projects and digital information systems.

Class Meetings

When the class meets on campus, we will make use of the assigned classroom from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. When we go on a site visit, we will make use of conference rooms at the host site. Because June 7 overlaps with the class meetings of several other courses, our class will not meet that day. Instead, we will have online activities (see Requirements below). Detailed class schedules will be distributed in late May.

Course Requirements: These requirements are for students taking this course for graduate credits. Information professionals taking this course for continuing education purposes are encouraged to complete these requirements.

• Attendance at class meetings and site visits and active participation in class discussion and discussion of presentations by guest speakers (25%)
• Preparatory exercises (15%): In place of the June 7 meeting, two preparatory exercises will be distributed a week before June 2 and students will submit the completed exercises via the Digital Dropbox on our Blackboard by 1 p.m. on June 1. These are pass/fail exercises. They will be discussed in class on June 2.  
• In-class exercises (30%): Several exercises related to lectures and presentations by guest speakers will be completed during the week of the class. These are pass/fail exercises. Failed exercises will have to be re-done and re-submitted at the time specified by the instructor. 
• Final project (30%): A final project for students to demonstrate their learning from the course will be distributed on June 6. The final project is due at 5 p.m. on Saturday, June 14, 2008. 

 Speakers and Site Visits (details to come)

• Government Printing Office.  http://www.gpo.gov/ 
• GPO's Federal Digital System (FDsys).  http://www.gpo.gov/projects/fdsys.htm
• GPO Access Home Page.  http://www.gpoaccess.gov/
• Catalog of U.S. Government Publications.  http://catalog.gpo.gov/F
• Library of Congress. http://www.loc.gov/index.html
• The American Folklife Center. http://www.loc.gov/folklife/index.html
• American Memory from the Library of Congress.  http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html
• National Library of Medicine. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/
• History of Medicine Division.  http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/index.html
• The Smithsonian.  http://www.si.edu/
• Biodiversity Heritage Library.  http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/
• Washington Research Library Consortium.  http://www.wrlc.org/
• WRLC Libraries Digital and Special Collections.  http://www.aladin.wrlc.org/dl/
   

Sites for Virtual Visits (In addition to the projects and collections listed above.)

• California Digital Library. URL = http://www.cdlib.org/
• Online Archive of California. URL = http://www.oac.cdlib.org/
• Cornell University Library Windows on the Past. URL = http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/
• Directory of Open Access Repositories - OpenDOAR. URL = http://www.opendoar.org/ 
• See http://www.opendoar.org/countrylist.php?cContinent=North%20America#United%20States for a list of US open repositories.
• DLIST: Digital Library of Information Science and Technology. URL = http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/
• The James Joyce Scholars' Collections. URL = http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/JoyceColl/
• MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching). URL = http://www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm
• New York Public Library Digital Collections. URL = http://www.nypl.org/digital/
• Open Archive Initiative (OAI). URL =  http://www.openarchives.org/
• OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting).  URL = http://www.openarchives.org/pmh/
• OAIster (A union catalog of digital resources that provides access to 15,475,946 records from 935 contributors).  URL = http://www.oaister.org/viewcolls.html
• University of Washington Libraries. Digital Collections. URL = http://content.lib.washington.edu/

Readings 

A workbook with reading materials and exercises will be distributed on June 2. A list of recommended readings will be presented here before the class begins.

• Brantley, Peter. 2008. Architectures for Collaboration: Roles and Expectations for Digital Libraries. EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 43, no. 2 (March/April 2008). URL = http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERM0821.pdf

• Dempsey, Lorcan. 2006. The Library Catalogue in the New Discovery Environment: Some Thoughts. Ariadne, Issue 48 (July 2006). URL = http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue48/dempsey/

• Harley, Diane. 2007. Use and Users of Digital Resources: A Survey Explored Scholars' Attitudes about Educational Technology Environments in the Humanities. EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 30, no. 4 (2007)  URL = http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/EQM0742.pdf

• Markey, Karen, Soo Young Rieh, Beth St. Jean, Jihyun Kim, and Elizabeth Yakel. 2007. Census of Institutional Repositories in the United States: MIRACLE Project Research Findings. Washington, D.C.: Council on Library and Information Resources. URL = http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub140/contents.html 

• NISO. 2007. A Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections. 3^rd ed. Baltimore, MD: NISO. URL = http://www.niso.org/framework/framework3.pdf  (by the NISO Working Group that includes Priscilla Caplan (chair), Grace Agnew, Murtha Baca, Tony Gill, Carl Fleischhauer, Ingrid Hsieh-Yee, Jill Koelling, and Christie Stephenson)

• Smith-Yoshimura, Karen. 2007. RLG Programs Descriptive Metadata Practices Survey Results. Dublin, Ohio: OCLC Online Computer Library Center, 2007. URL = http://www.oclc.org/programs/publications/reports/2007-03.pdf
• TSAI: Technical Advisory Service for Images. 2006. Metadata Standards and Interoperability. URL = http://www.tasi.ac.uk/advice/delivering/metadata-standards.html 
  
• UKOLN. 2006. Good Practice Guide for Developers of Cultural Heritage Web Services. URL =
  http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/interop-focus/gpg/
• Understanding Metadata. Bethesda, 2004. MD: NISO. URL =
  http://www.niso.org/standards/resources/UnderstandingMetadata.pdf