Hi,

I thought the below study about metadata enhancement by North Carolina State University might be of interest to the list.

R. John Robertson
skype: rjohnrobertson
Research Fellow/ Open Education Resources programme support officer (JISCCETIS),
Centre for Academic Practice and Learning Enhancement
University of Strathclyde
Tel:    +44 (0) 141 548 3072
http://blogs.cetis.ac.uk/johnr/
The University of Strathclyde is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC015263
________________________________________
From: [log in to unmask] [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Joyce Chapman [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, May 31, 2011 3:30 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [Metadatalibrarians] Research findings: how manual metadata enhancements make a difference in discovery

0 0 1 266 1519 NCSU Libraries 12 3 1782 14.0 Normal 0 false false false
EN-US JA X-NONE

For several years, the Metadata & Cataloging department at NCSU
Libraries has been exploring how our catalogers’ skillsets can be
applied to non-traditional metadata environments and remain relevant in
the shifting landscape of bibliographic control. For the past two years,
one of the ways we’ve done this has been to provide staff time on a
regular basis to enhance metadata for Special Collections’ digitized
materials, which otherwise do not receive any metadata enhancements.
However, we had no data on how effective such enhancements were for
increasing discovery for end-users. So this year we performed a research
study to evaluate the effectiveness of this workflow. Using A/B testing
and usage data from Google Analytics, we analyzed differences in unique
page views for images that had undergone metadata enhancements versus
images that had not (full methodology here http://go.ncsu.edu/llzhzy ).
( http://go.ncsu.edu/llzhzy). )

We found that the images with metadata enhancements received quadruple
the amount of unique page views as images with no enhanced metadata and
we found also that 28% of the Google search strings that led to unique
page views included person names, which were available only in enhanced
metadata.

We’re wondering if anyone else had done similar studies, or if anyone
is interested in replicating this study and seeing what you find. It was
a pretty easy study to do. If you are interested in more details about
findings or in replicating the study, you can read the entire report,
including the methodology for reproducing the study, here:
http://go.ncsu.edu/llzhzy

We also welcome any feedback or discussion of this research!

Joyce

Joyce Chapman
Libraries Fellow
North Carolina State University
[log in to unmask]
919.513.1652

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