Extending and Adapting Metadata Audit Tools for Mountain West Digital Library Members

Abstract

As a DPLA regional service hub, Mountain West Digital Library harvests metadata from 16 member repositories representing over 70 partners throughout the Western US and hosts over 950,000 records in its portal. The collections harvested range in size from a handful of records to many thousands, presenting both quality control and efficiency issues. To assist members in auditing records for metadata required by the MWDL Metadata Application Profile before harvesting, MWDL hosts a metadata auditing tool adapted from North Carolina Digital Heritage Center’s original DPLA OAI Aggregation Tools project, available on GitHub. The tool uses XSL tests of the OAI-PMH stream from a repository to check conformance of incoming data with the MWDL Metadata Application Profile. Use of the tool enables student workers and non-professionals to perform large-scale metadata auditing even if they have no prior knowledge of application profiles or metadata auditing workflows. In the spring of 2018, we further adapted and extended this tool to audit collections coming from a new member, Oregon Digital. The OAI-PMH provision from Oregon Digital’s Samvera repository is configured differently than that of the CONTENTdm repositories used by existing MWDL members, requiring adaptation of the tool. We also extended the tool by adding the Dublin Core Facet Viewer, which gives the ability to view and analyze values used in both required and recommended fields by frequency. Use of this tool enhances metadata completeness, correctness, and consistency. This article will discuss the technical challenges of project, offer code samples, and offer ideas for further updates.