A constructivist grounded theory approach to semantic metadata interoperability in digital libraries: preliminary reflections

This paper highlights the problems of semantic metadata interoperability in digital libraries. It argues that the prevalence of the plethora of standards and the lack of semantic interoperability is partly attributed to the absence of theoretical foundations to underpin current metadata approaches and solutions. The absence of such theories is a general problem in the library and information domain (Andersen & Skouvig, 2006; Floridi, 2000; Hjorland, 2000; Lehmann, 2010). The paper emphasises that present metadata interoperability approaches are mainly top-down and hierarchical which fail to take into account the diversity of cultural, linguistic and local perspectives. In this regard, the paper argues that a social constructivist approach should be adopted as libraries and cultural heritage institutions house information objects which need to be enriched with metadata that reflects diversity of views and perspectives of their users. In this paper, following on Charmaz (2006), a constructivist grounded theory method is adopted. The method allows an active interplay between the researcher and the participants who are library and information science researchers, librarians and actual library users. From the first phase of data collection, preliminary analysis is presented on how library and information science professionals view current metadata practises especially as used in academic library contexts.