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Introducing Metadata for Digital Archival Records

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What is metadata for digital archival records?

Under the Library and Archives of Canada Act (LAC Act), a record is any documentary material other than a publication, regardless of medium or form. The Library and Archives of Canada (LAC) Procedures for the Transfer of Digital Government Records define a digital record as a record in binary form; as such, “a digital record may be a single digital object, or it may consist of a series of interrelated, nested, or linked digital objects.” Digital records include, but are not limited to, word-processed documents, presentations, videos, data, geospatial data, and computer-aided designs (AutoCAD products).

Metadata provides essential information about records, supporting their creation, management, use, preservation, and access. It includes details about the context in which the records were created, their structure, and the systems used to create and maintain them. From a business perspective, this information is critical as it supports government institutions in ensuring that their records, documents, and data are discoverable and findable. This information is also vital for LAC as it explains how records were used over time and ensures preservation, access, integrity, and authenticity of records. It should be noted that a complete digital record consists of the digital object itself as well as the related metadata.

Metadata accumulates at different points during a record’s life cycle, for different purposes and in different ways, depending upon the software of creation, the storage system, and how the system is configured and used. Government of Canada (GC) institutions have a responsibility to ensure that records metadata is managed to support the authoritativeness, authenticity, integrity, and reliability of the records as evidence of the business they were created to support. Managing metadata also ensures that records remain discoverable, findable, and accessible over time and helps institutions meet their record-keeping obligations under existing Canadian legislation and policy, including the Access to Information Act and Privacy Act, the LAC Act, Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS)’s Directive on Service and Digital Appendix L: Standard for Managing Metadata, and other relevant authorities.

How is metadata stored or configured in various repositories or systems?

Metadata can be stored in a variety of systems. The implementation of structured metadata environments in enterprise information management systems (EIMS) or electronic document and records management solutions (EDRMS) often streamlines the creation, capture, and maintenance of records’ metadata. These environments (such as M365 or GCDOCS) structure metadata in fixed fields or containers to help ensure that it can be easily managed. It is important to note that not all digital records are maintained in EIMS/EDRMS. Unstructured digital storage environments such as shared drives are also used to store and manage government records. In all environments, management of metadata is important to support key information management activities.

In the GC, the Information Management Common Core (IMCC) configuration parameters gave a standard set of record-keeping metadata elements for EDRMS implementations to assist with metadata management. Although no longer actively supported by TBS, the IMCC still offers valuable implementation guidance and remains in wide use across the federal government. Yet even with standardized parameters for metadata, organization varies from one institution or system to another. This is because individual organizations configure and adapt their systems to support their specific business needs, resulting in a high degree of customized metadata in the Government of Canada.

Which metadata is mandatory for GC institutions during the records’ life cycle and at transfer to LAC?

The mandatory metadata is presented in LAC’s Operational Standard for Digital Archival Records’ Metadata as a set of concepts. This presentation increases flexibility as it allows GC institutions to determine what metadata from their system meets the criteria within a given concept, both during the active records’ life cycle and at transfer to LAC. The requirements are:

  1. classification code
  2. creator
  3. date/time
  4. disposition authorization
  5. extent
  6. format
  7. integrity
  8. language
  9. record identifier
  10. rights management information
  11. technical environment information
  12. title

As explained in the Operational Standard, the requirements are presented as concepts and not elements to account for the wide variety of systems used and configurations across the federal government. Note that for a given concept listed above (e.g., creator), there may be more than one piece of metadata that matches. In these cases, it is important to maintain both as part of the records’ metadata (e.g., IMCC agent name or MS Word author). Some examples of specific metadata elements can be found in Appendix C of the Operational Standard, and further guidance is being developed alongside examples from recent government transfers.

Where is the metadata located?

Generally, the metadata required to meet the standard is stored in the system used to manage the records. Some information is generated automatically when the records are captured (e.g., date and time), whereas other elements may need to be entered by those responsible for the record during active use. Metadata is enriched as the record is created, captured, managed, and preserved during its life cycle. This metadata needs to be maintained and linked to the records to which it applies in order for the records to be properly understood. This linkage can be managed through various means, for example, through an identifying number in a system.

Information management and information technology professionals will need to provide additional explanations and definitions relating to metadata creation and use as part of discussions and planning for digital transfers to LAC. These discussions will help demonstrate how the provided metadata meets the standard’s requirements, makes the metadata understandable, and ensures the transferred material remains accessible in the future by explaining its use in the proper context. In general, these discussions will focus on ensuring an understanding of existing metadata standards and data dictionaries used by the institution to manage and locate key metadata. It may also involve consulting other corporate documentation relating to information management policies and practices to understand the evolution of practices over time.

While the Operational Standard expresses the minimum metadata requirement, LAC anticipates that most digital transfers will include additional information that should be discussed with the LAC portfolio archivist as part of transfer preparation and metadata review. LAC’s technical experts and portfolio archivists are available to help with this work and to facilitate this task. It is also important to note that, as the processing of the records at LAC moves forward, LAC may determine that further metadata is required. This means that source records and their related metadata should not be deleted by the transferring institution until successful transfer and processing has been confirmed as complete by the LAC archivist as expressed in LAC’s Procedures for the Transfer of Digital Government Records.

Why are these metadata concepts required for digital archival records and what do they support?

These metadata concepts are required because they support the authoritativeness of digital records and ensure their continued use over time. Authoritative records, per ISO 15489-1 2016 (Information and Documentation—Records Management—Part 1: Concepts and Principles), are those that possess authenticity, reliability, integrity, and usability—in other words, those that can be authenticated as genuine, attributed to the entity claimed to have created or sent them, and confirmed to have been created or sent at the stated time. It is also crucial that an authoritative record’s content can be trusted as a full and accurate representation of the evidence to which it attests. Therefore, records must also be complete and unaltered, as well as usable, easily locatable, retrievable, and renderable.

There are two broad categories of metadata that LAC requires to ensure the authority of the record: administrative metadata and descriptive metadata. The table below provides more information on both categories, accompanied by examples.

Administrative

Administrative metadata is information that facilitates both short- and long-term management and processing of records.

Examples of administrative metadata include:

Descriptive

Descriptive metadata is information that establishes the conceptual content and attributes of records to support discovery and use. This type of metadata allows the digital archival record to be contextualized, identified, appropriately managed, discoverable in LAC’s systems, and usable over time.

Examples of descriptive metadata include:

Whenever possible, LAC leverages descriptive metadata provided by GC institutions for archival descriptions.

For usability of datasets, descriptive metadata may include accompanying matter such as metadata standards, data dictionaries, and read-me files outlining the collection, organization, and limitations of the data (e.g., scope, risks to data quality).

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