Use Case Description – What happens?
Activity – Provide researchers (ranging from academics to hobbyists) with a consolidated entry point or signposts to distributed and possibly un-catalogued collections, typically from the archives or museums domains, though library collections could be included. This is the first step to the use case of more fully exposing special collections to the mainstream.
Volumes – Small numbers of collections and relatively small descriptions serve a valuable purpose
Actors – Owners who have uncatalogued collections or who are seeking improved exposure; an gateway or portal aggregator motivated by the mission
Data involved – Collection level descriptions in such as EAD
Workflows – (a) Original or improved collection description may be required; (b) initial data load; (c) incremental update, to be encouraged but typically infrequent as collection descriptions do not change rapidly
Current Examples – The Archives Hub is a working example of this use case. The Open Metadata Pathfinder project is delivering a demonstrator of the effectiveness of opening up archival catalogues to automated linking and discovery through embedding RDFa metadata in Archives in the M25 area (AIM25) collection level catalogue descriptions.
Intended Benefits – What is the business case?
Data Owner – Opportunity for the collection owner
Aggregator – Whilst fundamentally not themed, this may creates opportunity (potentially low cost) for the aggregator to develop themed entry points or facets
End User – Surfaces unique resources through a platform with a stronger discoverability profile
