Metadata Management

Overview

Metadata Management is a project investigating ways to automate the maintenance of health information metadata in NC Health Info, a website that provides consumers with a single source for searching healthcare services and locating reputable information on diseases, treatments, prevention and more. As with most databases that contain large amounts of information, it is crucial to keep the website accurate and current.

RENCI, in collaboration with the UNC School of Information and Library Science Metadata Research Center and the Health Sciences Library at UNC Chapel Hill, is developing experimental metadata management software that automatically tracks changes in thousands of websites and highlights any new information of interest to metadata catalogers. This will enable the catalogers to identify and evaluate the information and update metadata to reflect new expertise provided by the health centers, which allows the staff to focus on growing databases and adding more health information for North Carolina consumers. The new prototype software aggregates information from more than 7,000 websites, and the resulting system may serve as a model for other health information websites in the Medline Plus Go Local system which includes 32 sites.

Funding

National Network of Libraries in Medicine

Partners

  • UNC School of Information and Library Science (SILS) Metadata Research Center
  • UNC Health Sciences Library

Project team

  • Nassib Nassar, project leader
  • Kevin Gamiel

Links

http://www.renci.org/news/releases/metadata-matters
http://sils.unc.edu/news/releases/2008/02_ammgo.htm
http://www.nchealthinfo.org/