One Small Step for Metadata Management in HathiTrust
In November 2010, a small team at the California Digital Library set to work on this ambitious goal: “By 2012, the California Digital Library will build a major component of HathiTrust: a system to manage HathiTrust partners’ bibliographic metadata.”
What exactly is this tool and who would use it?
It’s a backend tool to allow HathiTrust repository administrators to manage the metadata for the mass-digitized books partner libraries submit to HathiTrust.
Why is the University of California building this service?
Currently the University of Michigan manages HathiTrust bibliographic metadata in Mirlyn, their Aleph-based system. Freed from the demands of a traditional integrated library system, the Metadata Management Service, which replaces Mirlyn will be simpler and more attuned to the specific metadata management challenges HathiTrust faces.
The Metadata Management Service also demonstrates the ability of HathiTrust partners to step forward and build significant components of the overall HathiTrust infrastructure.
How far along is development? The first major milestone was accomplished!
The team completed the functionality for the core metadata management system, and on June 14, 2011 project technical lead Stephanie Collett demonstrated the core system to the HathiTrust team at University of Michigan.
For initial testing, the system was loaded with approximately 200,000 records from HathiTrust partner institutions. The final system will manage about eight million metadata records.
What’s next?
The next major development effort is to adapt this new system to the HathiTrust workflow. This includes integrating the system with the HathiTrust rights management database and developing batch exporting of metadata records.
What does this mean for University of California?
As a charter partner and key technical contributor to the HathiTrust project, CDL will be providing a critical component of the HathiTrust repository.
Learn more about the team and track the progress of this project on the HathiTrust Metadata Management System project page: http://www.hathitrust.org/htmms