Enriching Metadata Contents in Repositories: A case study in Institution Repositories of HIOA(ODA)

Abstract

This thesis aims to explore the current state of metadata practices in Institution Repositories of HiOA in terms of the awareness of Institution Repositories, metadata and metadata types, the availability of guidelines, the chief source of information on enriching contents, the metadata scheme used, and the opinions of staff on the problems and factors regarding enriching metadata contents for digital collection in ODA, the institutional repository of HiOA. The study is limited to ODA as a case study. A descriptive survey is used as the research method. Data was collected by using an online questionnaire. A survey link was distributed to informants who play different roles in the ODA projects. The research is based on qualitative methodology because it focuses on investigating the point of views from Hioa librarians, outside experts and authors as well as to analyzing the semantic of metadata elements being used in current digital publication at Hioa database. A total of 17 returned questionnaires were analyzed. The presented case study reports an activity focuses on the study of a metadata element which generated an benefit that can be useful for different purposes such as research, learning, easy retrieval from IR. It is conceived as an open access initiative and supported by the institutional repository on which we rely in order to ensure the long-term preservation, the visibility and the interoperability of the solution. In managing the metadata and making it richer different problems and challenges have been faced and investigated by these memory institutions and further research should be carried out to study other aspects of metadata implementation. The findings in the thesis could be a useful reference for the ODA projects.