Creating metadata for children's resources: issues, research, and current developments.

ABSTRACT

A key challenge to retrieval in any type of system is how to represent the resources appropriately so that the user(s) can find what they are looking for. In systems being used by children, as well as those designed specifically for children, there exist two fundamental representation problems: (1) the metadata or representation scheme of the system may not be designed with this specific user group in mind, and (2) few age-appropriate controlled vocabularies exist for use in creating metadata. Existing research in these two problem areas and the impact on the users' information seeking and retrieval experiences are presented. Current projects and developments, and the contribution that the users themselves can provide, will give the reader further insight into the issues and potential opportunities for research and application.

INTRODUCTION

Children(1) have unique information needs and information-seeking strategies (Walter, 1994). In today's increasingly digital world, children have access to a wide variety of resources in many different formats. They access information by using a variety of information retrieval systems such as library online public access catalogs (OPACs), online database systems, and the Internet and/or the World Wide Web (WWW). Within the Web environment, children can now access specialized collections of resources in digital libraries, subject directories, and Web portals that are designed specifically for their use. Increasingly, children prefer digital resources to locate information for school, to surf for entertainment, and to locate personal information (Levin & Arafeh, 2002; D'Elia, Abbas, Bishop, & Rodger, 2004).

In order to maximize the success of children's information seeking and use of the information systems, the resources (2) contained within the system should be represented at a level that is appropriate for this particular group of users. The metadata scheme and the metadata (3) describing the system resources should reflect an understanding of how children access, organize, and use information, but it must also take into account the user's understanding of how the system works and how the resources are represented within the system. This article describes the complexity of the representation process and research and developments in metadata schemes and age-appropriate controlled vocabularies. Current projects and the contributions that the users themselves can provide are discussed. Insight into the issues and potential opportunities for research and application will conclude the article.

REPRESENTATION

Information systems provide various means of accessing the resources of a collection. Users most often, with the exception of Web pages, are searching digital representations or surrogates of the resources and not the resources themselves. These representations can be in the form of bibliographic records in library OPACs, inverted indexes in online databases and digital libraries, or indexing codes embedded into the objects themselves. Each system's database structure or metadata scheme may vary, but the fundamental operation of the scheme or the metadata therein is to represent or describe the objects in the collection to facilitate retrieval.

Representation, or creating metadata, is not as simple as writing descriptions and/or choosing subject terms. It is a complex sociocognitive process in which many variables come into play. It has been defined using many lenses, such as library and information science, cognitive science, and linguistics, among others. O'Connor defines representation as "the set of means by which one thing stands for another.... [It is] a complex web of attributes of disparate objects and concepts, idiosyncratic and socially constructed codes and agreements, and neurological abilities" (1996, p. 11). Blair (1990) sees the problem of representation and information retrieval as linguistic in nature. How effectively we utilize language to represent an object determines the success or failure of the information-retrieval process. Blair also posits that the language that we use to express our information needs, as weil as document representations, is learned in a social context or community. Using Wittgenstein's theory of "language games," Blair explains that we do not acquire language purely by learning the word and its definition but instead by learning its use and appropriateness within the context of our "forms of life" or everyday experiences. Furthermore, we have to possess some prior understanding of the form of life or the language game context we are engaged in before the words can have meaning.

An important aspect of learning in general is the acquisition and application of the terminology of the subject. Children engage in "language games" as they go through their daily "forms of life" or experiences. Direct influences on their learning are their parents, teachers, the documents they engage with (textbooks, Web resources, etc.), and the information systems they interact with. Learning and knowing the appropriate "language" or terminology to use within these contexts is vital to their success both in information retrieval and content understanding.

O'Connor (1996) also notes that the user's developmental and cognitive state and domain and system knowledge, and the indexer's knowledge of the user and his/her intended purpose(s) for the objects, can affect representation and retrieval. His assertion is supported by the research community's exploration of obstacles or problems children encounter during information retrieval, such as term selection, developing and expanding search terms, and use of truncation and stemming (Abbas, 2001; Bilal, 2000a, 2000b; Cooper, 2002; Solomon, 1993). Studies of children's book indexing further illustrate the importance of understanding children's cognitive and developmental levels. Choosing age-appropriate terms and consistent use of word tense, as well as other issues concerned with order, display, and formatting, are crucial to providing appropriate metadata within indexes (Bakewell & Williams, 2000; Miller, 1973, 1980).

When creating representations for children, the process is further complicated by: (1) our incomplete picture of this group of users, (2) metadata schemes designed for use by adults and not children, (3) the lack of age-appropriate controlled vocabularies and guidelines used to create metadata, and (4) the differing cognitive abilities, developmental levels, and system knowledge of children.

RESEARCH AND APPLICATIONS

While there exists a significant body of research into adults' use of information systems, information-seeking activities, and understanding of the system's representation schemes, little research has focused on children. Use of OPACs (Borgman, Hirsch, Walter, &…