Metadata

Overview

The Software Preservation Network endeavors to ensure that cultural memory institutions and related entities can find, share, and reuse software. We do this by identifying and sharing existing relevant standards with our community, and by developing best practices that encourage broad inclusion in the activities of software preservation. We also contribute to the metadata ecosystem for software through the work of our member organizations, affiliated projects, and the Metadata Working Group.

Working Group

The Metadata working group is responsible for developing, promoting and advocating for common metadata frameworks and related metadata standards, vocabularies, and ontologies that support software preservation and access. This working group will collect and analyze existing metadata standards, develop approaches for establishing a common metadata framework, suggest crosswalking strategies, and promote community awareness of complementary standards.

Coordinators: Dianne Dietrich (Cornell University Library); Claire Fox (Yale University Library)

Members: Allan Christophersen (The Royal Danish Library); Elena Colón-Marrero (University of Michigan); Allen Kwan (Government of Ontario); Karen Hanson (Portico)

Past Members: Patricia Falcao (TATE); Phil Salvador (Video Game History Museum); Glynn Edwards (Stanford University); Wendy Hagenmaier (Georgia Tech); Matthew McEniry (Texas Tech University); Dan Noonan (The Ohio State University); Elizabeth Russey Roke (Emory University); Katherine Thornton; Tessa Walsh (Canadian Center for Architecture); Lauren Work (University of Virginia)

Current goals: 

• Develop a list of metadata fields used or likely to be used in description of software
• Develop guidelines for mandatory, recommended, and optional description
• Publish a Software Metadata Recommended Format guide that organizes and presents this information

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