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Robin Wendler is Metadata Analyst in Office
for Information Systems of the Harvard University Library.
As a member of the Library Digital Initiative team, she provides
expertise about all things metadata to the LDI team, to libraries
developing LDI proposals, to funded LDI participants, and
to the Harvard community at large. Robin's responsibilities
include:
- working with Harvard librarians and staff
to define the technical, functional, and
- access requirements for their materials
and designing appropriate metadata to fulfill those needs
- advising Harvard librarians and staff
on operational metadata issues such as workflow,
conversion specifications, quality control, and data maintenance
- investigating and evaluating existing
and emerging metadata standards, and, where appropriate,
representing Harvard's positions to metadata standards organizations
- monitoring metadata trends and informing
the Harvard community about key developments
- helping to develop the technical infrastructure
and the organizational structures Harvard
will need to manage and access its collections effectively
over time.
Metadata is one the most complex and expensive
components of any digital library project. Defining metadata
requirements can help set realistic expectations about the
scale of a project and contribute to the development of accurate,
well understood cost estimates. Librarians are encouraged
to seek assistance in defining metadata relatively early in
their project planning in order to insure that the metadata
will fulfill their requirements, be practical to create and
maintain, and will interoperate with other metadata within
Harvard and outside of Harvard as appropriate.
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