Content Analysis of CONTENTdm Item Level Records and Their Aggregated Metadata in WorldCat

This study examines the content in CONTENTdm item level records and their aggregated metadata in WorldCat. The research ascertains some amount of loss of contextualization in semantic meaning of digitized primary resources. Data was collected from non-probability sampling of CONTENTdm item records selected randomly from CONTENTdm's Collection of Collections Web page. The same aggregated digitized resources were retrieved in WorldCat, and the data was recorded and analyzed against the CONTENTdm records. Evidence shows that the value of the metadata is altered or ambiguous when the local field name is divorced from the descriptive metadata. Contextual meaning is lost when metadata is shared. In fact, the study reveals that the de-contextualization problem is two-fold: some inconsistent mapping from aggregated metadata and lack of clarity in the metadata itself.