Metadata Development for Palm Leaf Manuscripts in Thailand

The main objective of this research is, to develop metadata scheme for the management of digitized PLMs to increase efficiency in the search, access, management and use. The research framework was based on Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) model developed by International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), while the metadata development process was developed on the concept of Metadata Life Cycle Model (MLM). Thus, there were three main parts in this study: (1) analysis of the user needs and expectations with respect to the manuscripts, of the requirements for managing collections of palm leaf manuscripts, and of physical structure and content of palm leaf manuscripts; (2) development of a metadata schema based on the results of these analyses; and (3) implementation and evaluation of the final metadata schema. The prototype of PLM management system was developed to implement the PLMM to test and evaluate the usefulness of PLMM for access to PLM original copies and their content and for managing PLM digital collection. The finding suggests that the perception of the PLMM usefulness is relatively significant with users’ experience with the PLM. Finally, the PLM metadata schema (PLMM) was developed for palm leaf manuscripts consisted of 76 properties (34 core elements and 42 element refinements) to describe all versions and formats of the PLM. It can support both user tasks in searching for the PLMs and the collection management tasks. PLMM can dominantly express and describe the special characteristics and content of Thai Palm Leaf Manuscripts.