Carpets Metadata: Identifying and Defining the Information Items Necessary to Describe the Carpets

Abstract

Carpets represent important cultural, historical, and artistic artworks in human societies. To preserve and organize carpets in various private and public collections (including specialized libraries), these artworks must be described sin a way that is both special and unique. To describe these artworks, a comprehensive metadata schema is needed, which is currently not available. The research goal is to identify the necessary items to introduce and describe carpets in a metadata schema. The present study is applied in terms of purpose and uses a mixed approach that includes existing metadata schema literature and qualitative deep interviews. A combination of existing metadata standards, such as Dublin Core, VRA Core, and other standards related to textiles and decorative arts, can be used to define carpet metadata. The qualitative part will include interviews with a diverse group of stakeholders including carpet vendors and sellers, information experts, and collectors. The findings of the study showed that out of a total of 209 elements, based on the metadata standard of the studied carpet, 149 elements are used in the description of the carpet in the form of eleven subgroups and two main groups. The results of this study include the identification of key elements and organization in the form of a checklist that can be used as a guide for researchers and experts in the field of carpets. This checklist will help facilitate the collection and analysis of information in future studies and will contribute to the development of metadata standards in this field.