Overview

As part of its larger charter, the DLP Metadata Implementation Working Group (M-IWG) includes a task for identifying:

Administrative metadata guidelines (information related to staff processing/workflow)

A preliminary analysis of Administrative Metadata, defined by MIWG as “information about the workflow and processing of digital objects in the repository, primarily used to support staff users' activities” is documented here (additional types of metadata are documented separately on the DLP wiki). Administrative metadata includes information such as internal staff notes, system user information, and information about the metadata itself. It is predominantly intended for staff usage, but some information may occasionally be surfaced to end users. Detailed information about specific metadata units is documented in the inventory worksheet.

Scope of Deliverable

During the course of review, the MIWG determined it was not feasible to fully normalize this type of metadata in the DLP Discovery Phase, because it is directly tied to workflows which in some cases must be determined through future implementation decisions. The MIWG performed some initial consolidations of similar metadata units during review of the inventory, and also removed some inventoried units after determining they were out of scope for the repository context (e.g. they focus on activities happening in another system, or occur well upstream of ingest). The initial analysis is intended to serve as a starting point for implementation and migration, but does not include final normalization and levels of requirement.

Inventory and Initial Analysis

A review of current state administrative metadata was conducted. During the course of work, some metadata was added to the Administrative worksheet as a temporary location until its final overall categorization could be determined. In some cases, metadata initially identified as Administrative has been documented in Rights or Preservation Events/Workflows Metadata. Some metadata inventoried here is also tightly coupled with software functionality (e.g. embargo settings, user selection options) and may not ultimately need to be stored as conventional metadata.

The inventory included the following sources:

DAMS
Digitized Books
ETDs
OpenEmory
The Keep
Dataverse
New potential metadata units identified during DLP requirements gathering

For more details, the inventory worksheet is available here.

Additional Recommendations for Implementation

The following activities are recommended for implementation phase efforts:

Confirm final administrative or workflow metadata needs and mappings as production repository workflows are designed
Finalize which types of staff workflow activity should be stored as part of Preservation Events/Workflows
Consider needs for storing pre-ingest appraisal determination information, such as is identified in DCSC selection activities, as Collection-level administrative metadata