Current institutional repository software provides few tools to help metadata librarians
understand and analyse their collections. In this paper we compare and contrast metadata
analysis tools that were developed simultaneously, but independently, at two New Zealand
institutions during a period of national investment in research repositories: the Metadata
Analysis Tool (MAT) at The University of Waikato, and the Kiwi Research Information
Service (KRIS) at the National Library of New Zealand.
The tools have many similarities: they are convenient, online, on-demand services that
harvest metadata using OAI-PMH, they were developed in response to feedback from
repository administrators, and they both help pinpoint specific metadata errors as well as
generating summary statistics. They also have significant differences: one is a dedicated tool
while the other is part of a wider access tool; one gives a holistic view of the metadata while
the other looks for specific problems; one seeks patterns in the data values while the other
checks that those values conform to metadata standards.
Both tools work in a complementary manner to existing web-based administration tools. We
have observed that discovery and correction of metadata errors can be quickly achieved by
switching web browser views from the analysis tool to the repository interface, and back. We
summarise the findings from both tools’ deployment into a checklist of requirements for
metadata analysis tools.
