Designing metadata schema for a human library: a prototype

Purpose In the absence of a working model for describing, managing and archiving the human library resources, this study aims to attempt a practical approach that will provide all the necessary information to the library users, library professionals and researchers. Design/methodology/approach Initially, different metadata standards, archival projects and attributes of the human books were reviewed to identify appropriate metadata standards that accurately describe the resources of the human library. A free and open-source software; DSpace was considered for implementing newly defined metadata schema in this study. Thereafter, a set of new subject entries was incorporated to standardize the contents of the human library. Findings This study finds that the widely used metadata schema – Dublin Core (DC) is not appropriate to describe the contents of the human book. It shows that selected metadata elements from the types – person and event of schema.org can be used for describing, organizing and archiving the resources of the human library. It further highlights that existing subject entries are not sufficient to standardize the contents of these types of resources. Research limitations/implications Two metadata fields in DSpace are strongly recommended by the DSpace community to consider in the input-forms.xml file, that is why the study could not completely omit DC metadata elements in describing human books. Originality/value The study provides a roadmap to the library professionals on the inclusion of new metadata schemas in describing the uniquely featured resources of the library.