Managing Metadata in Web-scale Discovery Systems. Ed. Louise F. Spiteri. London: Facet Publishing, 2016. 197 p. $85.00 paperback (ISBN 978-1-78330-069-3); hardback (ISBN 978-1-78330-116-4); e-book (ISBN 978-1-78330-154-6).

Managing metadata in libraries today presents challenges to information professionals concerned with quality control, providing relevant search results, and taming the volume of items available for access in a web-scale discovery system. No longer are libraries limited to the collections they “own.” Catalogers and metadata professionals now assume the responsibility of providing access to millions of resources, often with limitations on who can access that resource. Relationships with vendors provide opportunities to help manage the gargantuan scale of information. Of course those opportunities come with their own problems as relationships among vendors can be contentious, leaving metadata managers to figure out quality control on a grand scale. In addition to this politicized information landscape, new ways of managing and creating metadata are emerging, leaving information professionals with the task of managing multiple schema in different formats. The essays in Managing Metadata in Web-scale Discovery Systems seek to address issues in managing the large scale of information overwhelming catalogers today, with potential solutions for taming the beast of exponentially increasing data.

The book begins with an essay on sharing metadata by Marshall Breeding, Angela Kroeger, and Heather Moulaison Sandy. The authors provide an overview of how discovery works in libraries compared to the historical aspects of cataloging. The current landscape of discovery services offered by the top vendors in our profession, such as ProQuest and EBSCO, are discussed in length. When comparing these new discovery tools with traditional library catalogs, some of the features of discovery are problematic to quality control. The size and scope of a centralized index means librarians must work closely and diligently with vendors to provide the best data with many disparate metadata schema, which can sometimes be inoperable if not properly encoded or mapped. Other problems librarians encounter have more to do with volatile vendor relationships, resulting in having to choose a system that works best to provide access to local subscriptions. Understanding the system in which a librarian works is also crucial to providing the best access in these new systems. Breeding, et. al. leaves us with the task of focusing efforts “on improving shared metadata, rather than on making local enhancements that benefit only a single catalogue” (42). The end goal of improving interoperability becomes increasingly important as more and more data from outside the library becomes available.

In “Managing linked open data across discovery systems,” Ali Shiri and Danoosh Davoodi address the responsibility of libraries to open their resources as linked data. They discuss the benefits, as these expand opportunities for libraries to enhance the findability of their resources. The authors address opportunities for development of linked data through the advancement of projects such as BIBFRAME. Though they do not address how librarians will educate themselves and implement linked data in their own libraries, there are examples provided in the library world to follow as developments in linked data unfold.

A common theme in many of the chapters touches on quality control in library discovery systems, or lack thereof. Christine DeZelar-Tiedman discusses the changes in the management of resources and what those mean in discovery systems, addressing issues such as granularity of description for search and access. She acknowledges the daunting task of managing licensed resources as a balancing act between our use of time and our role as stewards of information resources. Aaron Tay addresses the sheer volume of content in our discovery systems, asking whether providing access to everything risks quality of the returned results. Trying to fill indexes with as much content as possible and relying on relevancy ranking is problematic for libraries trying to maintain the content and the end-user experience. He provides a thoughtful approach as to how libraries will maintain or give up control of resources in the future, and the effect that has on searching. Tay argues that librarians should be thoughtful about the search experience in an index as large as a discovery system. Consider whether users will benefit from the vast amounts of owned and unowned collections a library offers, especially when relying on search results that favor high results over quality ones. In “Managing outsourced metadata in discovery systems,” Laurel Tarulli grapples with a healthy conversation about the lack of transparency in discovery systems metadata. The ultimate loser in the fight for transparency with outsourced metadata is the end user. Librarians will have to continue to fight harder for standardized metadata and work closely with vendors to find a balance that benefits their users.

The final chapter, written by editor Louise F. Spiteri, argues for the importance of user-generated metadata. She discusses the social features of discovery systems and the benefits to enhancement of bibliographic information with user-generated content. Her particular focus is on enhancing subject access with social tagging, highlighting the benefits to such library services as readers’ advisory.

While the book aims to address issues of quality access of metadata within web-scale discovery systems for all types of librarians, it is most appropriate for academic professionals already managing, or considering management of, data within these systems. There are redundant histories of library data management sprinkled throughout each chapter, which Spiteri addresses in the introduction as intentional. The chapters can therefore be read individually or as a whole; however, there lacks an overall cohesiveness when taken in full. The book has a nice balance of the practical, describing challenges of managing metadata in web-scale discovery systems, and the theoretical, encouraging libraries to explore those “what if” moments in discovery systems. Important conversations about the quality of data being offered in discovery systems take place. As user experience and the search process becomes more and more relevant, the topics in Managing Metadata in Web-scale Discovery Systems become critical to librarians who manage large volumes of data in discovery systems.—Brianne Hagen (brianne.hagen@humboldt.edu), Humboldt State University, Arcata, California