i202 Fall 2009 School of Information, UC Berkeley

You are working with a California historical society on a database for their digital archives. The database will be searchable through an online interface for historical researchers and the general public. The archives contain a mix of text-based documents and historical prints, photographs, and maps. Your job is to help develop metadata specifications for the items in the collection.

• What are three metadata elements that might be useful for describing all of the items in the collection, regardless of media?
• What are three metadata elements that might be useful in describing text items but would not be useful in describing multimedia items?  
• What are three metadata elements that might be useful in describing multimedia items but would not be useful in describing text objects?
• What are three metadata elements that might be useful to the society’s staff, but which you might not want to show to the general public?