This week I have started working on metadata, which as some of my coworkers have explained in the past, refers to subject terms and descriptive information about the digitized items. Metadata is important in digital archives because it allows patrons to find what they’re looking for with relative ease! Without metadata, users would have to spend more time looking for primary sources relevant to their research topic. Some items might be overlooked because they are too obscure or simply become lost in the over-saturation of items.
As this is my first day working on metadata, I am rather slow at putting all of the information into an excel spreadsheet. As time passes and I become more familiar with the Library of Congress subject headings that are relevant to the California Water Documents Collection, I suspect I will be able to complete the metadata faster.
One step I am looking forward to with the metadata process is working with geospatial information. We will eventually be working with the library’s resident GIS experts in order to input geographical information into the metadata. First, we plan on filtering the documents through text mining software to pull out geographic information. Whenever a document cites a location such as the Salton Sea, the text mining software will add that to a pool of locations, which we can then translate into latitude and longitude coordinates. From there, researchers will be able to use the metadata we provide in order to make maps with GIS. Â Â
I am happy to begin learning more about the next phase of the digitization process with these water documents. As a researcher myself, I know how important it is to find everything relevant to a research topic–you do not want to be told you missed something that could have been helpful. Thus, as I create the metadata, my goal is to be as thorough as possible while also still being efficient.