Metadata Elements for Children in Theory and Practice

This research aimed to investigate the status of children-specific metadata elements in theory (existing literature) and practice (metadata standards and children’s digital libraries). Literature reviews as well as two cases, including children’s online national libraries of Iran, and Singapore, are used to identify children-specific metadata elements and their application. The results revealed that descriptive metadata types had been mentioned more than analytical, social, and relational types; the DCMI metadata standard, besides LOM and ALTO metadata standards, can be used to develop an application profile for children’s library catalogs. Two cases showed that they partially cover children-specific metadata elements, and neither has covered relational metadata elements. A deeper analysis of the children-specific metadata elements suggests that children’s catalogs should be semantic and social. The results of this study can be insightful for children’s book catalogers and children’s book publishers (for marketing purposes).