Metadatakataloger

Metadatakataloger are repositories that store descriptions of digital resources, i.e., metadata, to support discovery, governance, and reuse. They are used in libraries, archives, government portals, and research organizations.

They typically describe datasets, documents, software, and media. Common metadata elements include title, creator, date, format, language, rights, provenance, and access restrictions. To enable interoperability, catalogs adopt standards such as DCAT, Dublin Core, ISO 19115, and schema.org, and use controlled vocabularies and identifiers like DOIs or ORCID.

Core functions include metadata ingestion from disparate sources (manual entry, automated harvesting via OAI-PMH, APIs, ETL), quality checks, enrichment, and versioning. They provide search and facet-based discovery, support data lineage and provenance tracing, and manage access controls and licensing information. They can publish metadata to external systems or data portals.

Architectures vary: centralized catalogs, distributed metadata registries, and catalog services. A metadatakatalog may be standalone or integrated with a data catalog or data governance platform. They facilitate data discovery, policy compliance, reproducibility, and reuse across organizations.

Challenges include ensuring metadata quality and completeness, keeping metadata up to date, managing privacy and access restrictions, and establishing clear stewardship roles. Interoperability across institutions requires consistent standards and identifiers.

In practice, metadatakataloger support research data management, library science, and public data portals by providing reliable metadata foundations for search and governance.