High-Quality Metadata And Repository Staffing: Perceptions Of United States-Based Opendoar Participants

Digital repositories require good metadata, created according to community-based principles that include provisions for interoperability. When metadata is of high quality, digital objects become sharable and metadata can be harvested and reused outside of the local system. A sample of U.S.-based repository administrators from the OpenDOAR initiative were surveyed to understand aspects of the quality and creation of their metadata, and how their metadata could improve. Most respondents (65%) thought their metadata was of average quality; none thought their metadata was high quality or poor quality. The discussion argues that increased strategic staffing will alleviate many perceived issues with metadata quality.