Improvement of metadata quality

The quality of metadata is crucial for the performance and acceptance of an overarching service such as the German Digital Library (DDB). On the one hand, there are the users of the DDB portal, for whom easy findability of objects is a central criterion for their use of the DDB. In this context, the quality of the metadata in the search index has a significant influence on search results and user experience when selecting relevant objects. In addition, high-quality metadata facilitates the selection of data (metadata and objects) relevant for a specific application and the further processing of the data according to the requirements of their applications.

Metadata quality is therefore tied to a purpose or a specific usage behavior. In addition, the requirements for data quality are constantly changing due to the continuous further development of search engines and search engine technologies. At its core - and thus equally important for most usage scenarios - metadata must support a fast and reliable search process in the inventory. This results in requirements for metadata such as completeness, accuracy, logical consistency and correlations, accessibility, timeliness, or proof of origin.

To permanently improve the quality of metadata, various measures are taken: Consulting and mediation services via analysis and reporting tools, improvements in relevant indexing systems, and optimization of all processing steps. Precisely the many manual steps offer a starting point for improvement and a higher degree of automation combined with greater standardization. The project therefore not only considers the metadata itself, but also deals with the procedures.

In cooperation with the German National Library (DNB) and the metadata working group of the DDB, the e-Research unit focuses on the following aspects:

• Introduction of a Metadata Quality Assurance Framework (requirements specification, assessment of technical concepts, technical evaluation of the result as well as integration of the framework into the ingest tools of the DDB).
• Introduction of pre-processing tools (requirements specification, creation of the implementation and operation concept and implementation of the prototype)
• Concept development for unified source code management and building systems

• Project term: June 01, 2020 – June 30, 2022
• Kontakt: Frank Schwichtenberg
• Contact: Federal government commissioner for culture and the media (BKM)
• Partners:
  Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (DNB)
  Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (SPK)