Challenges of metadata migration in digital repository : a case study of the migration of DUO to Dspace at the University of Oslo Library

Abstract

This work is a study of challenges in the metadata migration, generally and with DUO as a case, thereby defining the appropriate strategy to convert metadata elements of DUO to Dspace in the migration project at UBO. The study is limited to DUO as a case study. DUO is currently using home-grown metadata elements while Dspace takes Dublin Core Metadata element set as a default metadata schema. Therefore, the challenges including risks and conflicts might be occurred in the metadata migration process from DUO database to Dspace. In order to minimize these risks and conflicts, the appropriate strategy for the DUO migration plays an important role. To define the appropriate strategy and identify the challenges of metadata migration in DUO migration project, the structured interviews have been conducted to informants who play different roles in the DUO projects. Furthermore, the experiences of previous migration projects worldwide have also been consulted as well as the crosswalk of metadata elements in both DUO and Dspace were performed as well. The results of this study indicate that creation of a custom schema for transferring metadata elements and their values from DUO database to Dspace is a suitable strategy among other strategies. Many kinds of risks and conflicts in the migration of metadata elements in DUO to Dspace were identified through this study such as data loss, data distortion, data representation, synonyms, structure of elements set, null mapping and duplicate values. From these issues, some recommendations have been made to control the challenges in the migration. The findings in the thesis could be a useful reference for the DUO migration project and similar projects. The thesis might be used in the stage of decision-making for such future projects. Otherwise, the issues of the crosswalk from home-grown metadata elements to DCMES might provide evidences for other studies in this field.