Metadata Use in OAI-Compliant Institutional Repositories

This preliminary study examines the use of Dublin Core (DC) metadata in Institutional Repositories (IRs) that participate in the Open Archives Initiative (OAI). The study concerns evaluating IRs with respect to the quality of their indexing. In particular, I argue that in order to support successful retrieval of information, IR developers should endeavor to populate their indexes with well-structured metadata. The current study provides an initial motivation for this argument by analyzing the degree to which presently available IR metadata evidences such structure.