UNTL Metadata Documentation
The UNT Libraries actively promotes metadata-based digital resource management, monitoring national and international standards-related activities and conducting research into the theoretical and practical applications of metadata. Our goal is to provide optimum searching, discovery, and retrieval of information by users of our digital collections, while ensuring long-term preservation and viability of the digital objects in our systems. We employ a system of metadata developed in-house and based on qualified Dublin Core metadata elements that is called UNTL Metadata.
Metadata Input Guidelines
The metadata input guidelines are the primary documentation related to UNTL metadata including general information about technical requirements along with detailed explanations and examples of preferred formatting and usage. There is a “Quick-Start Guide” providing a top-level summary of most-frequent guidelines along with reminders about metadata processes and things to note about each field.
Content-Specific Guidelines
Certain kinds of materials have normalized guidelines to make metadata entry more consistent and efficient or have specific types of questions that tend to come up more frequently. These pages outline suggestions for entering metadata based on general trends for these material types. Editors may still need to consult fuller guidelines for certain formatting or usage questions not covered by content-specific guidelines.
Project-Specific Guidelines
Some collections in The Portal to Texas History and the UNT Digital Library present unique challenges for metadata creators. For certain large or ongoing projects, we have created guidelines with a sub-set of the full guidelines that are most applicable along with specific examples from those collections. Editors may still need to consult fuller guidelines for certain formatting or usage questions not covered by project-specific guidelines.
Supplementary Documentation
These pages provide additional information to assist editors in understanding how to complete metadata records in the Digital Collections and essentially act as appendices to certain field guidelines.
Technical Guidelines
This documentation provides links to additional administrative-level documentation (including the UNTL Metadata Application Profile) and information about technical processes and guidelines.
Vocabularies
Documentation related to controlled vocabularies that are not managed within our administrative system.
Tools and Quality Control
There are a number of tools built into the metadata editing system to assist with metadata analysis and quality control. This documentation discusses some of the features and usage suggestions.
Getting Started:
Metadata Input Guidelines:
Content-Specific Guidelines
Project-Specific Guidelines
Supplementary Documentation
Technical Guidelines
Vocabularies
Tools and Quality Control