Metadata Standards at NPL

As part of the Specify Image Attachment Protocol, you were introduced to Metadata- namely copyright and keywords. There is much more data that can be added, and the more metadata that gets added, the more useful the images are. Keywords help us search within our Image Library directory. Images that are published on-line have their metadata ready by search engines, who then use that data as a way of indexing an image.

If you are looking to add metadata to a lot of images with different information, consider using the modified VRA metadata tool, which is explained here.

In Adobe Bridge, under the Metadata tab, there are categories for a variety of accepted standards. None of the standards exactly apply to us, but there are a few that really do not. DICOM is medical metadata. All of our patients are very dead, so we just skip that one. Mobile SWF has more to do with Adobe Flash files, so again that's not something we're comfortable saying does not apply to our specimen images.

The author of this page uses the IPTC Core for Photographs standard. This standard is generally used by news media outlets. As NPL is a content provider of factual information, this seems to be the best fit. Below is a table of IPTC metadata fields, and a description of the data that goes there.

Attached to this page is also a general metadata file. It has the Creator Address and Contact info, IPTC subject code and copyright information already filled out. Please see screenshots at the bottom of this page for instructions on how to safely run it.

Title	Description
Creator	[Full first] and [last name] of the photographer. NPL Staff if unknown
Creator: Job Title	self evident. If NPL Staff was used, this remains blank
Creator: Address	Non-vertebrate Paleontology Laboratory; 10100 Burnet Road, Building 122
Creator: City	Austin
Creator: State	Texas
Creator: Country	United States
Creator: Phone(s)	512-232-5384 (Admin office)
Creator: Website(s)	https://www.jsg.utexas.edu/npl/
Headline	brief 2-5 word generalized synopsis. "Colorful fossils", "Mussels collected 100 years ago", "Cabinets in the SW cage"
Description	the caption of the image. Include Geographical info down to the county if possible.
Keywords	If possible, group images by Taxon so you can at least include [Family] or [Genus] as the first keyword. If not, [type of specimen]; followed by[highlights such as 'holotype', original coloration' etc.,]; [Lithography]; [Geologic age] Additional entries are helpful. Consider adding [Accession number];[Collected by name]; [Collection Name];[anatomical term for pose ie., oral, ventral,
IPTC Subject Code	13004002 (IPTC subject code for Paleontology)
Sublocation	leave blank
City	leave blank, unless working with material from a single localtiy
State	leave blank, unless working with material from a single State
Country	leave blank, unless working with material from a single Country
ISO Country Code	US for United States, use abbreviations from the Alpha-2 code on the ISO website.
Title	this will be filled in when you run the Add Filename to Title Tool.
Job Identifier	grant number or other internal ID
Instructions	leave blank
Credit Line	Non-vertebrate Paleontology Lab, Jackson School Museum of Earth History
Source	Non-vertebrate Paleontology Lab / Jackson School Museum of Earth History / University of Texas at Austin
Copyright Notice	Jackson School Museum of Earth History - Non-vertebrate Paleontology
Copyright Status	Public Domain
Rights Usage Terms	Although these photos are public domain, we would appreciate being contacted prior to use. We also have high resolution photos available for publication.

NPL Home

Photography Home

VRA metadata tool

Import Attachment Tool

Things to know:

Saving Images in the ImgLib

Attaching images to the Specify Database

General Metadata file

GeneralUT

To apply a preset metadata template, you must first save the file in the Metadata Templates folder. The file URL is below.

C:\Users\[your EID]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\XMP\Metadata Templates

Open Bridge and navigate to the photos you are working with. You MUST run the Add FileNames tool FIRST.

Once that process finishes, click on the drop-down menu on the upper right of the Metadata section. Choose Append Metadata, and pick the metadata profile you want to add. DO NOT use the Replace Metadata, as this will overwrite the title that was added in the above step.

Once the process finishes updating the images, it is ready to close.