Application of Dublin Core metadata in the description of digital primary sources in elementary school classrooms †

Researchers evaluated the ability of 4th and 5th grade science and social science students to create Dublin Core metadata to describe their own images for inclusion in Digital Portfolio Archives. The Dublin Core was chosen because it provided a systematic, yet minimal way for students to describe these resources at the item level and relate them to collection-level metadata prepared for digitized primary sources by archivists using Encoded Archival Description (EAD). Researchers found that while students were able to supply simple elements such as title and subject with relative ease, they had difficulty moving between general and progressively more granular or refined descriptive elements. Students performed poorly in distinguishing between and completing related, but distinct metadata elements, such as title, subject, and description. Researchers also found that there are still significant issues that need to be addressed if young users in a variety of learning contexts, especially those who are only recently literate, are to be able to make sense of richer metadata such as EAD that is used to describe collections of primary source material.