Enriching the Metadata of a Digital Collection to Enhance Accessibility: A Case Study at Practice in Kyushu University Library, Japan

In this practice paper, we report on the enrichment of the metadata of the rare materials digital archive provided by Kyushu University Library and present the results of its effectiveness. We examined the metadata of the rare materials archive. Metadata for items created at an early stage were missing for several fields, although basic fields were filled in, such as the title, language, and rights. We selected the following fields that may improve accessibility to each item: title’s pronunciation in Katakana, title’s pronunciation using the Roman letters, alternative title, pronunciation of the creator’s name in Katakana, creator’s identifier (ID), creator’s alternative name, bibliographic ID at Kyushu University, material ID of the source material, and publication year. These blank fields were filled in for 7,249 metadata during 2020 and 2021. The number of accesses of these items was examined, and the number of accesses from outside the campus, including Japan and overseas, significantly increased statistically. These results indicate that enriching metadata contributes to enhancing the accessibility of digital archives and collections.