'Contextual Wrappers' - Packaging collections information as part of open metadata provision
The project will investigate ways of creating and delivering collection level descriptions to provide an interpretive context to metadata for groups of object records, and provide technical innovation to release further value from aggregated object and collection records. It will make use of a significant set of existing and new object and collection level metadata supplied for aggregation within the Culture Grid, maintained by the Collections Trust. The ways in which collections from an individual institution can be defined will be explored, including the “is part of” relationship between records and the most effective ways of presenting this to the end user.
The research questions addressed will include: How appropriate is a flat structure model of aggregation in which object records are presented without context other than the search criteria? What is the value of introducing collection level descriptions as an intermediary stage in the search/browse process? Should certain metadata attributes for objects and collections be inherited from a record higher in the collection hierarchy? Can improvements be made at both the institutional data supply level and the aggregation level to assist the linkage between groups of related records?