The Management of Metadata in the Digital Photographic Collection at Celebration Ministries International in Harare.

Abstract

Metadata plays a significant role in facilitating the authentication and retrieval of digital photographic records. The purpose of this study was to assess how the capturing of metadata and the use of a photographic management software can facilitate easy retrieval and access to digital photographic records. According to Getaneh (2014), metadata is structured information that describes, explains and locatesinformation resources. Types of metadata such as descriptive, administrative and structural metadata are essential in managing photographs since they support the findability and retrieval of photographs. The study used a case study design, where interviews and questionnaires were employed as data collection instruments. The objectives of the study were to evaluate the types of metadata captured for retrieval purposes; understand the challenges associated with the storage and retrieval of photographs
as well as establishing the extent to which metadata assist in easier management of photographic collections of the church archive. The findings of the study revealed that the system used in managing the collection has incomplete retrieval metadata fields. This was due to the fact that the system used to capture metadata traits has pre-defined metadata fields, thus creating shortfalls in the captured information. More so, the software system used at the church archive is open-source software and it lacks defined metadata standards. The study recommended the adoption of socially-constructed metadata standard. Furthermore, there is need to use proprietary client-oriented photographs management software (PCOPMS) since it allows the capturing of sufficient metadata.