Managing eBook Metadata in Academic Libraries: Taming the Tiger (2016)
Donna E. Frederick
ALA Editions
978-0-08-100151-6
Managing ebook Metadata in Academic Libraries: Taming the Tiger
tackles the topic of ebooks in academic libraries, a trend that has
been welcomed by students, faculty, researchers, and library staff.
However, at the same time, the reality of acquiring ebooks, making them
discoverable, and managing them presents library staff with many new
challenges.
Traditional methods of cataloging and managing library resources are
no longer relevant where the purchasing of ebooks in packages and demand
driven acquisitions are the predominant models for acquiring new
content. Most academic libraries have a complex metadata environment
wherein multiple systems draw upon the same metadata for different
purposes. This complexity makes the need for standards-based
interoperable metadata more important than ever. In addition to
complexity, the nature of the metadata environment itself typically
varies slightly from library to library making it difficult to recommend
a single set of practices and procedures which would be relevant to,
and effective in, all academic libraries.
Considering all of these factors together, it is not surprising when
academic libraries find it difficult to create and manage the metadata
for their ebook collections. This book is written as a guide for
metadata librarians, other technical services librarians, and ancillary
library staff who manage ebook collections to help them understand the
requirements for ebook metadata in their specific library context, to
create a vision for ebook metadata management, and to develop a plan
which addresses the relevant issues in metadata management at all stages
of the lifecycle of ebooks in academic libraries from selection, to
deselection or preservation.
Key Features
- Explores the reasons behind creating records for our resources and
challenges libraries to think about what that means for their context
- Discusses the complex nature of academic libraries and the electronic resources they require
- Encourages librarians to find their own way to manage metadata