Ukrainian Archival Metadata in WorldCat: Exploratory Analysis

Abstract

The purpose of metadata is to enable information users to find, identify, select, obtain, and explore information resources. The largest global database of machine-readable bibliographic metadata, WorldCat includes over 500 million records that represent information resources in 483 languages. While most of these records describe individual officially published or released materials (print and electronic books and journals, VHS, CD, and DVD releases of documentary and feature films, officially distributed audio albums of songs and instrumental music), over 2.3 million of metadata records included in WorldCat represent archival materials of various kinds. Our study examined a sample of WorldCat records representing Ukrainian-language archival materials (including digital resources) that were not officially published or released with the goal to examine the extent to which these metadata records support the user tasks of find, identify, select, obtain, and explore.