One for Many: A Metadata Concept for Mixed Digital Content at a State Archive

Abstract

The Landesarchiv (State Archive) of Baden-Württemberg has designed and implemented a metadata concept for digital content covering a heterogenous range of digital-born and digitised material. Special attention was given to matters of authenticity and to economic ingest and dissemination methods under the requirements of a public archive. This paper describes the outcome of metadata discussions during the implementation period of the DIMAG repository. It treats integration of the repository’s architecture with the archival classification concept, measures for long-term accessibility, the creation of adapted metadata placement, and provisions for exchange with other applications for ingest and use. The deliberately short list of metadata elements is included in this paper. Some existing standards have been evaluated under a real use environment; this paper also introduces modifications applied to them in the project context.