| Phase I: Requirement Assessment & Content Anyalysis |
1. Acquisition of Metadata Base Needs
The first step of the metadata lifecycle is to interview the content experts or providers about their metadata requirements for each collection project, and to analyze the attributes of collection projects. The purpose of the interview is to acquire preliminary information and contacts, and also to establish a better understanding between metadata staff and content providers regarding the project background information. In the interviews, contact information, metadata schedule, metadata scope, legacy system, metadata context and metadata role and function have to be included and clarified. |
2. Review of Relevant Metadata Standards and Projects
This stage involves identification of potential metadata standards, and examination of existing metadata schemes and their use cases. Through this stage the collection project members could know better what kind of differences exist among other similar or homogeneous collection projects, and also re-arrange the focus of expected project goals. |
3. Investigation of Deep Metadata Needs
This step serves to identify a series of metadata needs of the digital library project more precisely. The concept of content analysis is employed to acquire metadata needs from each use case through a set of work documents (WD). The benefits include that metadata scope and context will be clarified, the kind of systems and databases integrated can be ensured, and examples for collection projects will be collected as a basis for the best practice. |
4.Identification of Strategies for the Metadata Schemes and Achieving Interoperability with Well-known Metadata Standards
This stage involves the formulation of metadata strategy for the digital library, based on the previous findings. The strategy includes adopting one or several existing metadata standards, or developing a suitable metadata scheme based on some standards.
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| Phase II: System Requirement Specification |
5. Preparation of the Metadata Requirement Specification
To achieve a common agreement among collection project participants, metadata specialists, and system designers, a Metadata Requirement Specification (MRS) should be prepared as a bridge for these members from a variety of disciplinary domains. |
6. Evaluation of Metadata Systems
This stage involves the evaluation of potential metadata systems. The collection project members can select an existing system developed by homogeneous or similar collection projects.
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| Phase III: Metadata System |
7. Preparation of Best Practice Guidance
This stage involves generating best practice guideline for individual metadata elements. The guideline can be used as a checklist or reference and as a means of ensuring the quality control of the metadata records in the collection project. |
8. Development of the Metadata System
The system developers develop metadata tools and systems based on the Metadata Requirement Specification.
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| Phase IV: Service & Evaluation |
9. Maintenance of Metadata Service
The purpose of developing metadata services is to guarantee the quality assurance of metadata mechanisms. A service model is constructed to formulate the service items. The metadata service model is composed of three basic elements, including service machanism, role and relations. |
10.Evaluation of Metadata Performance
The last stage of the MLM seeks to review results of the whole metadata process and performance. The evaluation is conducted according to the assessment of metadata record quality, the effectiveness of adopting a metadata scheme for retrieval, the use of metadata creation tools within the collection project, and the application of the Metadata Lifecycle Model in each stage. |
