Title Field

Field name: Your choice (default = "Title")

DC Element: Title

A name given to the resource. We recommend using Title as the first field in your metadata. This field will be displayed by CONTENT as a caption for thumbnails or as the first line of description below the image. Search results will be sorted alphabetically by the title.

The title could be an existing name already given on/with the resource (e.g., the title of a journal article for a digitized text version of the article, or the caption on an illustration that's been scanned). The title can also be a brief descriptive phrase supplied by the inputter.

You can have more than one Title field. For instance, if you had resources with titles in a foreign language, you could have a field "Title" for the original foreign-language title and then create another field called "English title" that would also be mapped to the DC element Title.

Special tip for the Compound Document Handler and Postcard View options of Contentdm:

Using these two applications introduces an extra level of metadata as it were--there will be metadata for the document in its entirety and also metadata for each of the individual pages (Postcard View is basically the Document Handler with just 2 pages, "front" and "back.")

For the entire document's metadata, all of the suggestions which apply to the "Title" field for image metadata can be applied. However, the individual pages scanned for the Document Handler should be titled in such a way that each and every page of the document will not be returned when searching for the title of the whole document. For example: You scan a booklet titled "Food and population." The title field for the whole document should be "Food and population," but the title fields for the individual pages of the document should be something that no one is likely to search for, or even retrieve by accident, e.g., "3zFAP01" for page 1, "3zFAP02" for page 2, etc. If the pages are named "Food and population page 1," "Food and population page 2," etc., a search in Contentdm for the booklet would then retrieve both the compound document "Food and population" AND each and every one of its component pages in succession.

Examples of field names:

  • Title
  • Caption
  • English title

Examples of data:

For a scanned text:

  • UW works to preserve history of WTO protests

For scanned images:

  • Athapascan canoes on beach near Russian mission, Kotlik, Alaska, 1895
  • Active volcanoes in Kronotskiy National Park
  • Winter Palace, Saint Petersburg, Russia

For a compound document:

  • Gold prospecting in Siberia (title of the entire document)
  • 4xGPIS001
  • 4xGPIS002 ...
  • 4xGPIS456 (for the individual pages, 1-456)

For a postcard view:

  • Visit the Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition! (title of postcard)
  • 8zVAYP1 (front side)
  • 8zVAYP2 (back side)

Recommended format:

For an existing title or caption:

  • transcribe the title or caption as it is found
  • but leave out initial articles: a, an, the

For titles that you make up:

  • who, what, where, when--most important and/or unique keywords should come first
  • leave out initial articles: a, an, the ("Winter Palace," not "The Winter Palace")

Recommended controlled vocabulary: None