Our roadmap to a uniform metadata infrastructure

12 Aug 2021

Metadata is a cornerstone of our work. How else can we make our many hours of archive content easily searchable for content partners and users? It’s also crucial for creating and executing our internal processes and service provision efficiently. Currently, however, the metadata in the meemoo archive system isn’t as uniform as desired. So it’s time to put that right!

The amount of data that is fed into our archive system has increased dramatically over recent years. More and more content partners are joining us with new (types of) collections and there are lots of new insights in general, such as technological developments and opportunities with artificial intelligence (AI). These and other developments all have a significant impact on what our metadata infrastructure needs to look like and be able to do. One thing is certain: the model that we developed in 2016 is gradually becoming unusable.

That’s why we’ve drawn up a new roadmap for the next few years – a route to an improved metadata infrastructure. We’ve summarised the core aspects of this metadata roadmap for you in five horizons.

We’re focusing on making the following more sustainable, robust and uniform:

  • metadata storage and organisation: choosing the database technology and framework;

  • machine-readable presentation of metadata: designing and using data models and formats;

  • metadata integration with user applications: method for (internal) tools and digital access platforms to search, add, modify and request metadata.

We’re using this roadmap to translate objectives from our strategic plan into high-level infrastructure goals, and have created five specific horizons to transform existing and future collections of metadata into a sustainable and accessible collective memory for meemoo and our partners and users.

This roadmap alone isn’t enough, however. That’s why, in 2020 and 2021, we’ve already taken the first steps for horizons 1, 2 and 3, collaborating on a metadata modelling exercise together with colleagues. Our content partners will also be actively involved from the autumn onwards. The new metadata infrastructure will enable them to share more metadata with us and have easier access to it.

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