There have been many definitions of metadata put forth in this class and from my readings, from the most general which lists metadata as descriptive keywords to the most complex, but efficient, description listed in Hawkins' article. Hawkins defined metadata as “a moving target with high acronymic density, and has a kaleidoscopic perspective that may fall into a pattern at any minute.” This definition states the frustration of producing uniform metadata in a constantly changing publishing world, but also suggests that information professionals have almost achieved uniformity, we just need a little more time. In the majority of my readings there was a consensus that the standards for metadata creation and evaluation needed to be uniform to facilitate the user's search. There were many theories presented and several differed in deciding where the responsibility lay for creating and evaluating metadata. One school of thought suggested that it was the author's or publisher's duty to create and maintain metadata (Hawkins, p.28). Another theory was that information professionals and/or librarians should bear the responsibility for metadata creation (O'Daniel). “Librarians have been organizing large masses of data for some time, and most of the people who are responsible for making the Internet what it is today don't know how to do it (Chepesiuk, p.60).” The reality should be in between these two schools of thought and the creation of a standardized scheme for developing metadata would achieve that goal.

In developing the checklist for the evaluation of metadata quality, I also analyzed the four factors given in the assignment description. (The quotations in this section, unless cited, are from IRLS 501 description of Assignment 2.) 1) Consistency which is how consistently names and terms are used in describing the resource. Consistency also goes along with a continuity factor “meaning the degree of standardisation of the format (Tolonen, p.4).” 2) The accuracy factor focuses on the question of whether the features described accurately reflect the metadata with no errors or typos. Basically, the metadata should exactly reflect the source. 3) The granularity factor is described as “the level and depth at which the resources are described – obviously when websites are described rather than web pages the granularity of the resource is top level, the type of learning resource is not very useful, and not very deep – so pages buried inside may not be retrieved.” 4) The subject indexing level of the metadata focuses on whether the subjects used to “index the resources [are] summative or exhaustive.” One of the most important aspects of evaluating metadata subject indexes is vocabulary control. “Vocabulary control, or lack of it, creates one of the biggest problems in finding desired documents, or avoiding the retrieval of unwanted documents (Torok, p.2).” 5) The specificity, or clarity, factor “involves the level at which an entry describes document content (Torok, p.4).” In this case generalization would not be acceptable unless synonymous relationships were created such as if a resource was about Siamese cats, and the metadata only listed cats and/or felines, it would need to be expanded into listing Siamese cats and maybe special feline breeds. This factor is similar to accuracy and subject indexing, but takes it one step further, which I thought was necessary as the more control is exerted over metadata the closer information professionals come to a standard format. 6) The currency factor is desperately needed, especially for the ever changing world of web resources. There needs to be a section for the metadata evaluator to regularly check and sign off on the existence of the web resource, such as is the source still in existence, has it become outdated, and do the metadata qualifiers still apply.

All of the above mentioned metadata quality factors were applied to the Metadata Creation forms for the web resources I used in Assignment 1 and each factor was given a value of 1 as I believed they were all equally necessary and valid. Thus, for the Summary Table, I rated the quality of metadata for each web resource as Poor (fulfilling 0-2 metadata quality factors), Average (fulfilling 3-4 metadata quality factors), and Excellent (fulfilling 5-6 metadata quality factors). This system simplified the evaluation process into an easily accessed and understandable format.

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