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The MAAT (Metadata Architecture and
Application Team) aims to assist collection-based projects of the NDAP in
developing metadata mechanisms and services. “Metadata” is the background
information associated with objects, and falls into three categories:
descriptive, structural, and administrative and offers three levels of
interoperability including data structure, content and value. These services
characterize digital collections so that resource discovery, retrieval,
representation, management, and preservation are optimized.
Currently, the MAAT supports nearly
eighty collection-based projects of the NDAP, with a variety of data types,
subjects, communities, and functions. The data types include photos, voice,
films, rubbings, specimens, rare books, paintings, artifacts, documents,
language databases, and dictionaries. The subjects comprise arts and humanities,
social sciences, and normal sciences. The communities consist of libraries,
museums, archives, and herbariums. The MAAT is responsible for promoting and
planning metadata for NDAP. The main objectives, including service and research,
are:
- To
develop strategy planning and application of metadata standards.
- To
develop metadata theory, including metadata methodology, knowledge
organization and ontology, and so forth.
To this day, the MAAT offers the following services:
- Support
for metadata for provision for collection-based projects of the NDAP (e.g.
content analysis, selection of metadata standards, metadata system
specifications).
- Support
for core element sets for Thematic Groups (e.g. zoology, botany,
anthropology, archives, and rare books). Thus the metadata within and among
Groups will be interoperable.
- Develop
Application Guideline/Best Practice of international metadata standards
(e.g. CDWA, and EAD).
- Develop a
Chinese version of international metadata standards (e.g. CDWA, EAD, and TEI
Lite).
- Develop
the national metadata standards (e.g. CDWA, EAD, and LOM).
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