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Mariana Bojorquez
Janet Gatz
Alexandra Womack
LIS 882
9 December 2017
Metadata Record Group Project Report

The name of the digital photo collection and the fictional institution used for this project
was the Digital Comic Book Cover Collection of the Modern Art Institute of Chicago. The scope
of this collection included high quality digital photos or scans of standard comic book covers
from DC, Marvel, and other iconic comic book publishers. The records were created for a
general population, but more specific information included in the metadata record could be used
by more knowledgeable researchers, enthusiasts, or collectors. Considering the nature of both the
original items and the digital copies of the covers, the records were created using the DC Simple,
DC Qualified, and VRA Core schema. The group was able to establish more elements in the
native scheme because VRA Core is a flexible scheme meant for visual art objects. After
discussion, the group decided it was overall a better choice for the group’s subject matter than
MODS. Group 3 chose comic book covers due to their cultural and emotional significance in the
United States. American comic books reflect noteworthy aspects of American culture in the form
of entertaining illustrations and dialogue which often satirize or echo the evolving social and
cultural concerns of the era in which they are created. While the cultural legitimacy of comics in
academia is only beginning to emerge, current scholars argue that comic books have always
provided insight to American life and American culture and reserve a niche in American pop
culture that should be explored. Each comic book cover is unique in that they are meant to be a
single image that summarizes the plot and characters contained in the comic book itself. Many
of these images also provide significant cultural context. This collection makes those covers
available to a wide variety of users, from serious cultural scholars to casual readers interested in
rare covers of their favorite stories. By creating these linked records, MAIC hope to encourage
complex engagement with the material and these users. It also allows patrons to look with new
eyes at a medium that they have seen throughout their life.

Before the group began working on anything, we carefully considered the steps and
requirements of the project. We decided to break the work down into stages: creation of the
metadata application profile, creation of our records, and creation of the final report. We relied
heavily on Canvas. We established several discussion threads that we used to ask each other
questions, share out work in progress, and make plans for the time we had in class. With the
exception of the actual metadata records, work on the MAP the final report was carried out and
via Google Docs and Google Sheets. Keeping the selected schema in mind, we drafted the MAP
in class and resolved to make additions or changes to the MAP as we began constructing our
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records. We all chose a comic book from three different publishers; one Marvel, one DC, and
one independent press. We scanned the front cover and any other pages that were sources of
viable information. Since we were most concerned about creating the VRA Core record, two
group members used their time out of class creating VRA Core records for their items that could
then be compared and edited for cross-record consistency. The other group member created a
DC Simple and a DC Qualified record for her cover. In-class time was then used to edit the two
VRA Core records and to check the DC records for accuracy. We used these records as style
examples for each other and created the remaining records for each of our items accordingly. No
one group member was responsible for one schema; all three of us created a VRA Core, a DC
Simple, and a DC Qualified record for our items. To create the MAP, we used two references:

Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. (2017) XML schemas to support the Guidelines for
implementing Dublin Core in XML. Retrieved from:
http://dublincore.org/schemas/xmls/.
Library of Congress. (2007) VRA Core 4.0 Element Description. Library of Congress
Standards. Retrieved from:
https://www.loc.gov/standards/vracore/VRA_Core4_Element_Description.pdf.

Creating the metadata application profile was one of the most challenging parts of this
project. We created the MAP in class so that we could all decide together what information
needed to be included and the extent of that information. We created an effective MAP, but we
still found that we needed to make adjustments as we ran into issues creating our records. Most
notably, we found that we had to change the VRA Core set that included the unique barcode
included on the cover of each comic. We discovered that that the two group members who
created the first VRA records had put this barcode in two separate places. However, because of
the tools that we had decided to use before ever starting the project, we were able to quickly
make changes or ask questions. Since we created the MAP with VRA Core in mind, we had few
issues mapping VRA Core onto our scheme. Despite this, we did sometimes run into issues
when attempting to map VRA Core elements onto Dublin Core elements, qualified and simple
both. We did our best to ensure that all the information included at the local record could be
included in the DC and VRA Core records. Unfortunately, that meant that some information had
to be included in a free text DC field instead of being properly encoded in the metadata. Some
additional information about the collection and some unique tags were therefore lost between the
local scheme and DC Core.

Metadata quality was a concern for us throughout the creation of our records. We needed
our records to accurately reflect the items we were cataloging and be as accessible as possible for
a wide variety of users. To accomplish this, we all created separate records and we put them
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through several different stages of checks. The first stage allowed us to create a guide for
universal style and to eliminate variance as best we could. This included editing the language
used in encoded values and establishing consistency in what attributes to include in what sets.
Our in-class time was vitally important in establishing good discussions to improve metadata
quality and consistency overall.
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Mariana Bojorquez
Item 1: Marvel's Spider-Man/Deadpool (2016) #1: Isn't it Bromantic? Part 1

Janet Gatz
Item 2: CrossGen Comic's The Path (2003) #15
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Alexandra Womack
Item 3: DC's Super Sons (2017) #7: Planet of the Capes Part 2