Digital Practice Workshop Series: Metadata

On July 15, 2025, the Centers for Digital Scholarship (CDS) and the Humanities Center jointly hosted the first workshop in the Digital Practice Workshop Series. This workshop was focused on metadata and ethical considerations of metadata. Led by Shireen Zaineb, the Humanities Center Digital Project Archivist, and Colleen Nugent McLean, the Centers for Digital Scholarship Coordinator, students learned about how metadata can shape how individuals and communities are represented. All of the workshop participants were current employees of digital projects with spaces in the CDS, including the Digital Transgender Archive, the Reckonings Project, the Early Caribbean Digital Archive, and the Early Black Boston Digital Almanac.

The workshop began with a brief presentation by Colleen and Shireen that covered the basics of metadata, including metadata types and standards such as Dublin Core. The presentation also emphasized the need to think critically about applying metadata fields to digital projects, best practices for assigning metadata, and other ethical considerations. The bulk of the presentation covered ethical considerations of metadata, and best practices for assigning metadata. They highlighted how ethical metadata involves transparency, community engagement, and self-description when applicable. Self-description and community engagement are especially relevant for projects that deal with contemporary materials and materials including living people, which applies to many of the projects with spaces in the CDS.

Following the presentation, workshop participants split into small groups for a hands-on activity. In addition to materials that the participants submitted, Colleen and Shireen provided various examples of archival metadata from Northeastern’s Special Collections. After selecting materials and completing a metadata worksheet, the group came back together for an extended discussion about the consequences of inconsistent and incomplete metadata.