Metadatasse

Metadatasse is a metadata management framework designed to enable consistent description, discovery, and governance of digital resources across heterogeneous repositories. It aims to unify metadata practices across libraries, archives, data centers, and enterprise catalogs by providing a common conceptual model and interoperable interfaces.

At its core, Metadatasse provides a metadata registry and exchange protocol that allow repositories to publish, discover, validate, and synchronize records. Key ideas include schema-agnostic mapping, provenance tracking, and pluggable adapters for source formats and domain vocabularies.

Technically, it uses a metadata graph model built on RDF or JSON-LD, with optional support for PROV-O provenance. Access is delivered via RESTful APIs and a query layer for cross-repository discovery, versioned records, and audit trails.

Applications include digital libraries, institutional repositories, research data management programs, and enterprise data catalogs. Metadatasse supports metadata quality assessment, curation workflows, rights management, and preservation planning through its modular components.

History: Metadatasse emerged from collaborations among librarians, data scientists, and standards developers in the late 2010s. Early prototypes appeared in 2020, with broader adoption in academic, cultural heritage, and industry settings by the mid-2020s.

Criticism and challenges include the complexity of crosswalking between legacy schemas, governance of the central registry, and maintaining performance at scale across large organizations.

See also: Metadata, Data governance, Metadata schema, Interoperability standards, Provenance.