Reading List - Paper I

Data Driven Indexing to Address Item Level Challenges in Organizing Sports Documentary Multimedia Collections

Literature Review

Geoffrey Yeo. Continuing Debates about Description

Mentions the future directions of digital archives including the descriptive challenges of digital records. Some argued that "they need significantly more metadata than their paper counterparts, particular at item level". It talks about the requirement for a fundamental shift away from collective description, as it is evident that users would welcome more information at item level. At the same time, to describe the resources at item level would create much more burden on the archival institutions. "As archives become increasingly digital, automated capture of descriptive information can be expected to offer the most promising economic solutions".

While on the other hand, it also mentions that most preservation and access strategies for digital records requires item level metadata alongside or within the records.

David Bearman (1996). Item Level Control and Electronic Recordkeeping

It mentions that "automatic context and structure description within the metadata of electronic records at the item level would serve user needs better than collective description". And "Item level information is fundamentally more valuable because it can generate more valid collective level data in addition to serving the needs of item documentation."

Mark A. Greene & Dennis Meissner (2005), More Product, Less Process: Revamping Traditional Archival Processing

It is argued that the processing productivity will increase by avoiding "content description, beyond simple file lists, below the series level".

Ian G. Anderson (). Are You Being Served? Historians and the Search for Primary Sources

When asked about the single thing they would most like an archive to do, 37 per cent of the historians would want to add greater detail to finding aids, particular at the item level.

Burt Altman & John R. Nemmers (2001). The Usability of On-line Archival Resources: The Polaris Project Finding Aid

The researchers indicated that they will be more satisfied when they have the ability to search at the item level rather than the folder level.

Sabre & Hamburger (2008). A Case for Item-level Indexing: The Kenneth Burke Papers at The Pennsylvania State University

Though some collections contain repetitious or unorganized materials would better be processed on a series level, in instances of collections with many disparate items, the item level description provide more concise information to assist reference staff in service and researchers in discovery. Also certain benefits to item level indexing of collection can counterweigh processing time and cost.

Shan C. Sutton (2012). Balancing Boutique-level Quality and Large-Scale Production: The Impact of "More Product, Less Process" on Digitization in Archives and Special Collections

"The radical improvement in access brought by searchability of item-level metadata is a major benefit that would be impossible with strictly minimalist metadata". And "The impact of the minimalist metadata practices needs to be fully accessed to ensure that this approach does not overly compromise the ability to meet user needs and expectation for discoverability in the online environment".

J.Allison-Bunnell et al. (2011). Researchers at Work: Assessing Needs for Content and Presentation of Archival Materials

A survey of audiences' needs in using systems that present digitized archival materials. Most of subjects made comments about the level of metadata. They want as much detail as possible. Their needs are more acute at the item level with digitized archival materials particularly photographs and visual images.

Researches have revealed that lesser levels description has a negative impact on the discoverability and retrieval of digital images. (Therrell, 2019) It challenges the information professionals to develop efficient ways to assign item level metadata to digital image collections.

One of the challenges lies in the efficiency of conducting item level description. Considering the increasing amount of digital images, it will be costly to process the metadata in a low level, both timewise and in terms of human labor. That is the context where the "More Product, Less Process" movement has been arisen from. It is argued that the processing productivity will increase by avoiding "content description, beyond simple file lists, below the series level". (Greene & Meissner, 2005) It is pointed out that to describe the resources at item level would create much more burden on the archival institutions. (Yeo) Matusiak and Johnston talk about difficulty in metadata creation for large-scale image collections. (Matusiak & Johnston, 2014)

There is the need for the establishing of adequate methods for organizing the resources especially the multimedia materials. (Turner, 2010) "As archives become increasingly digital, automated capture of descriptive information can be expected to offer the most promising economic solutions". (Yeo) Turner mentions some efforts in the field of computer science seeking to generate semantic information automatically. (Turner, 2010) Zhang indicates that due to the volume of digital records, lower-level description will not be possible unless processed in an automatic way and automatic mapping creator-generated metadata into the digital archival system will make "automated archival processing possible at the item and/or file level". (Zhang, 2012)

Another challenge in creating item-level descriptive metadata for multimedia collections is to deal with the authority work. The lack of worldwide, hierarchical authority for metadata is the issue for multimedia collections especially those related to certain field. Matusiak and Johnston mention the difficulty in authority control when creating metadata for geographic image collections. (Matusiak & Johnston, 2014)

Identification is another issue for multimedia materials indexing. For example, the difficulty in identifying geographic locations for historic photography is regarded as one of the most challenging aspect of metadata creation. (Matusiak & Johnston, 2014) There is the system that combines text and image recognition to generate further textual indexing. The automatic propagation of indexing appears to be very promising for identifying elements. (Turner, 2010) "