Identifying Metadata Quality Issues Across Cultures

Abstract

Metadata serve discovery and access by providing contextual, technical, and administrative information in a standard form. Yet metadata are also sites of tension between sociocultural representations, resource constraints, and standardized systems. Formal and informal interventions may be interpreted as quality issues, political acts to assert identity, or strategic choices to maximize visibility. We therefore sought to understand how metadata quality, consistency, and completeness impact individuals and communities. By reviewing a non-random sample of 427 records, we identified 32 unique issues and classified them into 5 categories to better explain how metadata and communities press up against each other to intentionally reflect (or not) cultural meanings.