What Powers Discoverability and Accessibility at the Heart of Your Library?

By Jennifer Wedge (Metadata and Discovery Manager, AM)

As a metadata specialist I know that each time a student in your library searches a database or library catalogue, or even their favourite streaming service on the weekend, it’s metadata working hard behind the scenes. Well-structured metadata is essential to helping your users discover relevant sources and materials needed for assignments regardless of the subject they’re studying.

As a former academic librarian, the metadata I’ve relied on throughout my career can be as simple as a file creation date. Or can take the shape of detailed and structured records governed by international standards. Either way, it is vital for discoverability and ensures that wherever your students start their search, they can either find exactly what they’re looking for. Or even serendipitously discover something relevant they perhaps didn’t even know existed.

As an example, one student studying the Dust Bowl might find weather data, while another discovers novels or letters from the same period. All through shared metadata like “1930s” and “Great Plains.”

Supporting Discovery in the Library Environment

Metadata is a big part of the publication process at AM and my role to make materials as discoverable as possible to all users. The metadata we work with is drawn from source archives and supplemented with additional data created by the AM Editorial team. This facilitates more effective browsing and searching across each collection.

Providing as much data as possible behind the scenes is an increasingly important part of the process. Digital resources are even more frequently being used in teaching and research beyond humanities in support of developing critical skills.

Making these digitised historical materials as discoverable as possible to all researchers, regardless of topic, means ensuring metadata integrates smoothly into existing library systems.

A large part of that is the provision of records that comply with MARC 21, the standard format for bibliographic data used in academic libraries. Monographs and serials digitised within AM’s collections are catalogued using familiar MARC practices, but our collections go far beyond books and journals. AM’s primary source collections can include anything from promptbooks to personal correspondence, artwork to alarm clocks.

Translating all of that into MARC requires a blend of automation and human cataloguer oversight, taking metadata created by our Editorial team and converting it into structured MARC records using a tailored process for each collection.

Key Challenges in Cataloguing Primary Sources

Creating MARC records for primary source collections is a fascinating endeavour, though it comes with a unique set of challenges. One of the foremost issues is scale. Some of AM’s largest collections include tens of thousands of digitised items, making a certain level of automation not just helpful but essential to ensure efficiency and consistency.

Another major consideration is the diversity of material types within our collections. For example, our publication 1980s Culture and Society includes more than a dozen different document formats, ranging from zines, posters, and physical objects to correspondence and films. While we strive to tailor MARC records to the specific characteristics of each material type, many of the items we publish defy neat categorisation within existing MARC formats, requiring creative and flexible metadata solutions.

Assigning accurate and consistent subject metadata across such varied historical materials is also a complex task. Our Editorial team develops bespoke controlled vocabularies for each publication, drawing on feedback from contributing archives, expert editorial boards, and the communities represented in the collections. While this allows for nuanced and contextually rich metadata, mapping these terms to standardised library thesauri — particularly the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) — can feel reductive. Nonetheless, LCSH remains the most frequently requested subject vocabulary among librarians, and considerable effort has been made to incorporate it into many of our newer collections. In instances where LCSH integration is too labour-intensive, we are exploring the use of FAST (Faceted Application of Subject Terminology), which offers better alignment with our in-house editorial metadata structures.

Sensitive content poses another layer of complexity. For instance, the Amnesty International Archives includes materials related to human rights violations in the latter half of the twentieth century. Representing this content appropriately within MARC records requires careful attention, including the use of accurate subject headings and the thoughtful inclusion of content warnings to inform users without sensationalising the material

Finally, we aim to create metadata that is flexible enough to meet a wide range of institutional needs. This often means adopting multiple approaches within the same collection. For example, when revisiting the MARC records for Mass Observation Online, we encountered differing preferences among users — some valued granular, item-level records for individual documents, while others preferred higher-level records that grouped related materials. To accommodate both perspectives and support broad discoverability, we now offer both item-level and collection-level MARC records for download.

Despite these challenges, each collection offers the cataloguer its own quirks and joys to work on. From transliterating Russian film titles for Socialism on Film , to navigating established meeting names in The Olympic Movement, every collection brings a different form of puzzlesolving to the intellectual work of cataloguing.

Balancing Efficiency and Accuracy in MARC Creation

AM publishes interdisciplinary collections regularly and we strive to release accompanying MARC records alongside them so that researchers can start discovering content right away. With collections containing hundreds or even thousands of items, creating these accurate and vital records is no small task.

Attention to detail is crucial. The placement of specific punctuation in a title statement may seem minor, but for a metadata librarian, that misplaced colon can signal wider issues within a record. Hamilton fans will know the importance of punctuation placement. After all, you can change the meaning with a comma in the middle of a phrase.

Previously, records were generated through a rigid mapping process that kept all formatting as it appeared on the platform. But today, workflows are customised for each collection with improved formatting and added enhancements like authority-controlled names and subject headings to optimise discoverability.

In AM’s The Nineteenth Century Stage collection, for example, authority control is used to disambiguate theatres with similar names and link records related to specific locations, helping trace productions and organisations more effectively.

So How Does All This Metadata Work Help Your Users Across Disciplines?

Humanities resources in your library are not just used by humanities students. From business to politics and human rights to marketing, students and researchers are using historical materials in different ways. Having the correct data sitting behind the scenes supporting discovery is the key to making interdisciplinary research easier whatever the research topic.

Metadata makes primary sources searchable, relatable, and analysable across disciplines, allowing for richer, more integrated research. It acts as a bridge between fields that might otherwise operate in silos and presents new opportunities for fascinating research and discovery.