Metadata and Resource Management in the Digital Age

A Duo-decadal Bibliometric-Narrative Map and Assessment

Abstract

The library is saddled with the responsibility of meeting the needs of patrons which in this digital era/age is a function of proper management of information resources. Though, the manual metadata (library catalogue) has been employed as a tool for the management of resources, the influx of non-organized digital information resources calls for modern ways of management which is the use of sophisticated database management system (DBMS) in a digitized library. the study investigated metadata and resource management in the digital age: a duo-decadal bibliometric-narrative map and assessment. It emphasize and appraised the relevance of metadata and information resource management in the digital age with a view to appropriately apply and implement the term “metadata digitization” as a tool in library resource management in the digital era. The two-cluster study employed a narrative-bibliometric assessment and adopted the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) guideline to retrieve documents from relevant database (Web of Science and Scopus). The bibliometric-narrative review of related details include: the description of the concept of metadata, types used in information resource management structure, the usefulness and application of metadata and challenges in the digital age. A total of 3411 documents were globally recovered with date/time ranging from January 2000 – 2022 December at 12:12 am 1/5/2023. It revealed that although the concept of ‘metadata’, its structure, categories, classes, application has been employed by various related investigators/countries in diverse field of study, it has not lived up to its relevance. The study has shown that the term has been used by different authors, institutions and countries with a low collaboration index of 6.56, yet there is a geometric increase in the yearly/annual distribution of documents-metrics on metadata and information resource management globally. In addition, authors productivity and keywords occurrences are very high with increasing yearly numbers of publication. This indicates that the implementation and application of the term yet remain low. A lucid drive towards the appropriate application and implementation of the term “metadata digitizing” as a tool in library resource management in the digital era is suggestive.