The user‐centered design of a non‐specialist metadata tool and interface for the Internet Public Library

Abstract

Good quality metadata are key in supporting user interactions with a repository. Poor quality metadata hide resources, produce poor search results, and negatively affect user satisfaction (Barton et al. 2004; Beall 2005; Geisler et al. 2002). Good quality metadata can be resourceintensive to produce, and as a result there is a 'metadata generation bottleneck' between the growing numbers of digital resources requiring description and the limited numbers of metadata specialists who can create such descriptions (Liddy et al., 2001). This can restrict metadata production and reduce the utility of repositories (Wilson, 2007). Approaches to addressing this bottleneck include training more metadata specialists; automatic metadata generation (Liddy et al., 2001; Ochoa & Duval n.d.); and also the solution discussed in this poster, the user-centered design and development of a tool to support student volunteers and interns to engage in the creation and quality control of Dublin Core metadata records for the Internet Public Library (IPL:http://www.ipl.org/).