Contents:
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Functional Roles of Collections and Collection Description in Aggregation Scenarios
- 3. Representational Requirements
- 4. Modeling Strategies for Collection Representation and Description
- 5. Conclusion
- References
The authors, members of the IMLS Digital Collections and Content (DCC) project and developers of the Europeana Data Model(EDM), recently formed a collaborative study group to recommend an extension of EDM to explicitly accommodate representation of collections and collection/item relationships. First they acknowledge the following functional roles of collections and collection descriptions, namely to fulfill: the needs of individual users accessing or contributing content, of system developers seeking to improve search experiences, and of institutions providing data to federated aggregations. The study group analysed these functional roles in aggregation scenarios, and concluded that the current data models that support cultural heritage aggregations are not designed to fully accommodate and integrate collection-level data. Therefore they have developed a set of general requirements for the representation of collections in digital aggregation systems. They have organized the collection-level properties into six categories, thus suggesting a collection-level description that enhances the usefulness of collections in large-scale digital aggregations. In section 4 the study group recommends an extension to EDM and demonstrates how the collection representation requirements can be addressed in that data model.
This article addresses the representation of collections in digital library systems that aggregate or exchange cultural heritage data whether these collections contain audiovisual content or not. It does however provide useful input for metadata specialists, archivists and/or policy makers working in AV archives or with audio visual collections that are, or are intend to become, part of Europeana or other (internal or external) aggregators.