7 - Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research

century and a half ago.” And so many other features of the Indian manuscripts pose
challenges tot he organizers and cataloguers. However, to highlight a few, the problems in
cataloguing of Indian manuscripts are summarized as follows:
3. Metadata
• Uncertain authorship. Authors are almost bee-hived in obscurity and
the variants in Indian name only add confusion to obscurity.
• Proliferation of the different manuscripts of the same text both in India
and abroad and also the mass of related peripheral literature render
the task of identification and authentication difficult.
• Over whelming enormity of anonymous works.
• Lingual and scriptural variations also contribute to confusion.
Synonymy in sounds and signs leads to interchangeability. Errors
of scribes have lead to the complete divergence between the
meanings of the text of the original and its manuscripts.
• Loose-leaf practice of manuscript maintenance has resulted into mutual
shuffling of pages.
• Indian manuscript catalogues swarmed up inordinately both in quality
and quantity, quite unrelated and independent of one another even in
the same very language.
• Hence, cataloguing a manuscript is a difficult task, which requires a
skill and competence. However, with the advent of IT, using
Metadata standards, T comprehensive cataloguing and access to
manuscripts can be made easier and simpler.
Metadata is structured data, which describes the characteristics of a resource. The term
‘Meta’ derives from the Greek word denoting a nature of higher order or more
fundamental kind. It shares many similar characteristics to the cataloging that takes place
in Libraries, Museum, Archives, and Manuscripts etc. This enables people searching for
electronic information to find the information they are seeking more efficiently. Metadata
is invaluable for both discovering and using resources because is succinctly describes,
manages catalogues, and retrieves the resources, efficiently and effectively.
• Some of the most popular Metadata schemes include:
• Dublin core
• USMARC (United States Machine Readable Cataloguing)
• AACR-2 (Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules 2 nd Edition)
• GILS (Government Information Locater Service)
• RDF (Resource Description Framework)
Each metadata scheme will usually have the following characteristics:
• A limited number of elements.
• The name of each element.
• The meaning of each element.
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