INTEGRATING AND LEVERAGING METADATA IN A SHARED ENVIRONMENT: THE UNIVERSITY OF MACAU EXPERIENCE [PRESENTATION]

Abstract

Library cataloging and metadata have been evolving since mid-1990s with the emergence and development of the World Wide Web and communication technology. The purpose of the presentation is to have a brief review of the development history of the cataloging and metadata practices of the University of Macau (UM) Library, in order to demonstrate the transitive changes from traditional cataloging to the promotion and preparation for structured data management, from the static and single-source catalog to dynamic and multi-sources discovery platform. To enhance the value of the library’s bibliographic data is to share and re-use the data locally, regionally, and worldwide. Library cooperation and continuing education to the library staff are essential to this goal. A recent project entitled MALA Hub is introduced in the presentation as well. It is a region-wide academic resource-sharing project initiated and launched its first phase in 2019, with the sponsorship of Macau SAR Government. The purpose of the project is to pool together, disclose, and share with each other all kinds of resources available for the 9 library members of Macau Academic Library Alliance (MALA) in Macau, including physical pieces, consortium subscribed resources, the individual library paid resources, open-access resources, and in-house developed digital resources from the libraries and the community. In addition, derived from the MALA Hub by leveraging metadata integrated on the Hub, several topic-specific resource portals are suggested by the Government and the community. The first topic-specific portal, Portuguese Portal, covering all available resources in the Portuguese language has been launched at the end of 2019. More portals are planned to be done in the coming future, such as Macau Study Portal, Specialized Collections Portal, and so on.

This project was implemented by adopting a commercial discovery platform. There are mainly three tiers in the framework of the project, namely,

(1) Central Portal: integrating the resources and relevant metadata obtained from all the MALA members, open-access resources, etc.

(2) Individual Portals: the local discovery systems for gathering and storing all the resources and relevant metadata from individual library members of MALA. Seven individual discovery platforms have been established and assigned to the seven individual libraries of MALA.

(3) Topic-Specific Portals: by leveraging and defining particular criteria for the metadata consolidated from all the MALA members (including open access resources), topic-specific portals could be designed in a flexible way.

Benefits and challenging issues in planning and implementing the project are discussed and a possible framework for effective metadata management and collaboration in a shared environment is being developed.