Introduction

In this chapter two cases studies are presented to demonstrate this metadata strategy as implemented in a working environment. Both are taken from digital collections based at the Warburg Institute in London, UK. The first of these, the Warburg Digital Library (WDL), is a set of digitised books from the Institute's library. The second, the Warburg's Iconographic Database, is an image archive based on its extensive photographic collection of works of art. These initiatives employ the first two approaches to a metadata strategy outlined in Chapter 4. The Digital Library relies on ‘off the shelf ‘ standards (such as MODS), while the Iconographic Database uses an internally designed architecture based on CIDOC-CRM which is then serialised into these; in both cases, METS is used as the overarching architecture within which the metadata is packaged.

The description of practices in these case studies is not intended to certify them as comprehensive exemplars of excellence but, rather as demonstrations of how the standards and methods outlined in this book may be applied in operational repositories. The first of these, while implementing most of the principles discussed here, currently lacks in particular the extensive range of administrative metadata necessary for long-term preservation. The second is a work in progress at the time of publication, to the extent that it has reached the stage of implementing its metadata architecture but the system to deliver it remains under development. Despite these caveats, it is hoped that a discussion of the practical applications of this strategy, particularly the workflows involved in creating metadata that conforms to the standards outlined, will demonstrate that what is proposed here is readily achievable within any digital library.

The Warburg Digital Library

The Warburg Institute is part of the University of London's School of Advanced Study, a centre for postgraduate study and research in the humanities which consists of eight member institutes. The Warburg's area of academic activity concentrates on interdisciplinary studies, particularly those concerned with the visual arts. It is named after the art historian Aby Warburg (1866–1929), a German scholar whose primary interest was the influence of the Classical Greek and Roman traditions on later cultures.