{"id":251,"date":"2020-10-15T12:26:25","date_gmt":"2020-10-15T11:26:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/researchmatters\/?p=251"},"modified":"2020-10-18T09:10:16","modified_gmt":"2020-10-18T08:10:16","slug":"open-access-week-2020-the-importance-of-metadata","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/researchmatters\/2020\/10\/15\/open-access-week-2020-the-importance-of-metadata\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Access Week 2020: the importance of metadata"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I thought I\u2019d start this by telling you a bit about me, I\nwork at the National Oceanographic Library and help staff from the University\nof Southampton and the National Oceanography Centre with their open access\nqueries and applications to fund their research papers. Luckily, I also get to\nmanage the archives based at NOC which holds a unique collection of scientific\ndata, logbooks, photographs and videos covering the subject of oceanography and\ndeep-sea research. If I\u2019ve piqued your interest you can find out more here – https:\/\/www.noc.ac.uk\/facilities\/national-oceanographic-library\/archives-special-collections<\/a>.\nIn my previous role I was a Cataloguer and catalogued new stock which was purchased\nfor the library. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Photo
Emma Guest, NOL Partnership Librarian <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Each element (open access, archives and cataloguing)\nrequires the inputting of accurate metadata. Metadata in simplest terms is data\nabout data, it provides more information to help describe another piece of\ndata. Such as a catalogue record for a book, the information contained in the\ncatalogue entry describes the book by title, author, publisher, published year,\nnumber of pages etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, you might be thinking, is there really metadata\nassociated with open access? The answer is of course, the open access paper\nalone has so much within it. The data is telling the reader about all kinds of\ninformation. Such as author(s) and title, the subject of the paper in the form\nof keywords, a brief synopsis captured in the abstract, and then not forgetting\nthe research in the body of the paper. There is data indicating what you can do\nwith the paper through Creative Commons licences, and whether you can freely\naccess the paper because it has been published as open access. Then there is\nthe DOI (Digital Object Identifier) a string of letters, numbers and symbols\nwhich is unique to the paper and links it to a location on the internet. You\ncan also find within the paper information on any research funding received.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The library on behalf of the University of Southampton\nreports back to UK Research and Innovation’s (UKRI) and funders who are\npartners in the Charity Open Access Fund (COAF). We ensure all this\ndata is accurately entered, with key data which is needed within the reporting\nspreadsheet. We ensure we enter the acceptance and published dates correctly;\ncan you imagine the spreadsheet file for dates displaying in US with m\/d\/y\nformat instead of the UK d\/m\/y? It could skew the data. Again, all this data about\ndata which we deal with every day which must be precise and accurately recorded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you start processing an archive collection you need to\nlist the material so it can be found and used. This isn\u2019t just found by a\ncustomer wanting to access the file, but also found by a member of staff in the\narchives. You start by sorting the material so it can be boxed up and stored\ntogether in smaller collections within the larger collection. Such as a\ncollection which has logbooks, photographs, data print outs, you would put\nsimilar items together. Depending on the size of the collection it can take quite\na while to sort. At some point, you will then want to list the items (if you\nhaven\u2019t started this already). When you list items in an archive you are creating\nmetadata, as you are describing each item in the box, you then would describe the\ncollection as a whole. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have simplified each element where we are dealing with\nmetadata, but you can see each step requires you to have attention to detail.\nIncorrect data can cause issues when reporting back to funding bodies on open\naccess. Or even within the open access paper itself, if a link or an email\naddress is entered incorrectly you may not be able to follow the information or\nget in touch with the author regarding their data. The same is true within the\narchives, enter a wrong location and the item could be lost forever in the\nshelving. Throughout my career (so far) my role has changed quite considerably\nand the knowledge I require to undertake my role. However, thinking about it,\nthe role is not that different after all, I still deal with metadata, I still\nrequire attention to detail and I still sit in front of a computer, and no\nlibrarians do no sit around reading all day (we wish!).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you have any comments or questions, please get in touch via eprints@soton.ac.uk <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Open<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I thought I\u2019d start this by telling you a bit about me, I work at the National Oceanographic Library and help staff from the University of Southampton and the National Oceanography Centre with their open access queries and applications to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3722,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[52,51,8,49],"class_list":["post-251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-access","tag-archives","tag-metadata","tag-open-access","tag-open-access-week-2020"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/researchmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/researchmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/researchmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/researchmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3722"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/researchmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/researchmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":270,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/researchmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions\/270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/researchmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/researchmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/researchmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}