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== How the Überset Almost Killed Me: using a METS Document to Create and Update Fedora Data Streams ==

This decision entailed rethinking how to replicate Islandora’s functionality of creating and updating the DC and MODS data streams. When speaking to the programmer on the project, one of his tasks was to ingest METS (Metadata Encoding Transmission Standard) documents from Archivematica into Fedora. The programmer and I talked about the idea of using METS as a metadata standard to help us create and update data streams. As the metadata librarian on the project, I also wanted a way to be able to update other types of metadata beyond the description such as important rights or preservation metadata, which would not be in the same data streams as the DC and/or MODS. Moreover, I knew that metadata would not be the same in all of our Fedora Digital Objects. Each of our Fedora Digital Objects would need to have data streams created and updated with appropriate metadata. This lead to the decision of using a METS document with all the relevant metadata needed to create and update data streams. All of our Fedora Digital Objects would have such a METS document. Because these METS documents dealt with a rather large portion of our available metadata, we began to refer to them as the superset and eventually the METS überset document. As a result, as the metadata librarian, I created a METS Profile for the METS überset document that has just been approved and registered by the Library of Congress.

In this presentation, I will describe my process of how the METS überset document came to be and the specifications outlined in its METS Profile. I will also highlight the lessons learned from the process.

[[Category:Code4Lib2013]]