A Practical Metadata Approach towards Chinese Rubbings

Chinese rubbings, rubbed from original objects of stone, wood and bronze, are a special rare collection and deemed precious historical and cultural heritage. The study reports the metadata planning for the Digital Rubbings Project initiated at Academia Sinica which houses one of the largest and most valued Chinese rubbings around the world. In response to Chinese rubbings across various domains, with very different from book and journal collection, the Metadata Working Group aims to develop a standard set of workflows for the metadata applications. Firstly, this paper adopts IFLA’s FRBR model as an analysis framework to design metadata elements and distribution in a context way. Then a set of workflows for rubbings metadata analysis and implementation are highlighted. The workflows involve the acquisition of user needs and data requirements, metadata analysis, mapping, system implementation, guidelines and tutorials for Digital Chinese rubbings. The research findings include (1) metadata types and relations should not be limited to objects only; (2) re-examination of IFLA’s FRBR’s model; (3) a collaborative model for metadata applications. Finally, this paper suggests that “project management” and “a generic metadata framework” are essential for those organizations conducting more than two metadata projects simultaneously. Introduction Academia Sinica has dedicated the Digital Library and Museum Project which is