Metadata Creation

For Chinese books, a new MBP defined metadata standard (Edocument Metadata, Version 2.0) has been released by Zhejiang University Libraries with the help of Peking University Library, Shanghai Jiaotong University Library and other institutes, which combines DC with MARC. DC is used to describe digital objects produced from the project, while MARC is used to describe documentation objects or the original books. In this way, the available MARC records will be utilized, the digital library metadata standards will be followed, and the digital books will be fully described in MBP. The software named "MetaCreator" has been developed by Zhejiang Uni. libraries and applied in 14 scanning center.

For English books in MBP, we will use Digital Library Federation standards and metadata best practices.

Bibliographic metadata are derived from existing library catalog records. CMU libraries developed Metadata capture software that uses the standard Z39.50 protocol to search and retrieve relevant metadata from catalog records fields. Thus, author, title, and publication data do not have to be re-keyed[5].

Entering metadata information manually is time-consuming. One of the current research projects is software development for "automatic discovery of document structure". This will permit users to create hyperlinks which are not present in the original printed version of the book and navigate through the chapters.

Administrative metadata are maintained internally as file descriptions in the project databases and externally as part of the copyright permission database, which support the maintenance and archiving of the digital objects and ensure their long-term availability.