[Metadatalibrarians] Using Dublin Core

[John Fienberg]

Dublin Core is probably the best possible thing you could use without any
kind of a budget, especially without a training budget. It's the most
idiot-proof metadata schema because it's the easiest to customize. I am a
corporate librarian for advertising agencies (means I'm the only person in
my entire multinational operation with any librarian training) and Dublin
Core is my best friend. I'm not sure what tool you'd want to use, but I can
reaffirm that you're making the right call by using Dublin Core. Volunteers
will absolutely be able to use it with minimal training, but you are
probably going to want to lock down as many fields as you can into
controlled vocabulary so that people can't make silly mistakes (typing the
same commonly used keyword three different ways in three different records,
for example)​. Volunteers rarely fully understand how crucial it is to
input everything with as close to 100% accuracy as possible while
cataloging, so locking down a lot of fields into controlled vocabulary will
significantly limit the damage that inaccurate entry can cause.

I hope your endeavor goes well! Your community is lucky to have you!

-John