Page 149 - Building Digital Libraries

CHAPTER 6

FIGURE 6.8
METS with Dublin Core Example

Figure 6.8 illustrates a very basic METS document that is used at
Oregon State University (OSU) for archiving structural information about
digitized text. In this example, one can see that OSU has chosen to utilize
Dublin Core, rather than MODS, for embedding its bibliographic descrip-
tive data. This decision was made primarily due to the fact that OSU utilizes
DSpace, which stores metadata in Dublin Core. In the interest of repurpos-
ing metadata, Dublin Core was chosen as the descriptive metadata language.
However, this example demonstrates the flexibility of the METS container.
While METS was developed in concert with MODS, its greatest strength lies
in its ability to accommodate a descriptive metadata format—allowing users
to take advantage of the METS framework while still utilizing the metadata
schema best suited for their materials or infrastructure. The Library of Con-
gress provides access to a number of additional METS example documents
at its METS home page (www.loc.gov/mets).

importing Digital Objects
As a transmission format, METS has provided digital repository designers
with a simple structure that can be supported to facilitate the batch import
of digital objects. For systems that do not natively support METS, batch
importing tends to be done using simple tab-delimited files for flat objects
or the file system to preserve document hierarchy. However, this type of
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