Study of 13-17th century Marathi manuscripts: author generated metadata and its mapping with Dublin Core

Abstract

This paper reports on a study that examined the author generated metadata for 13th–17th century manuscripts. For the study 30 different handwritten Marathi (local language of Maharashtra State, India) manuscripts by Marathi poet saints were analyzed critically especially the start and end note areas (colophon area) from which one can easily identify the author, subject, geographical area, time period of the manuscript, etc. An attempt is made to map these author-generated metadata with Dublin Core elements set. Translated DC elements into Marathi are also used for mapping purpose. The results indicate that authors created good quality metadata to classify the manuscript easily. This research suggests that metadata created by poet saints from 13th–17th century can be easily mapped with DC elements. There are key metadata elements found in manuscripts that need to be incorporated. The study is very significant as the digitization of these manuscripts is under progress and the basic metadata will be useful for "resource discovery" once the data will be made available on the Internet.