Metadata at a crossroads: shifting 'from strings to things' for Hydra North

At the University of Alberta Libraries we are currently developing a Digital Asset Management System (‘Hydra North’, built on Hydra and Fedora 4) to bring all of our digital assets into one platform for discovery, access and preservation. The metadata underlying these repositories has been created according to many standards (DC, MODS, EAD, etc.) and varies in level of fullness and overall quality. We find ourselves at a ‘metadata crossroads’ as we attempt to bring this disparate metadata together. We see a solution in a move to RDF and the application of the principles of linked data. In this presentation we will discuss some of the initial questions we asked ourselves as we tried to fully grasp what the move to RDF and linked data would mean for our existing metadata; outline some of the decisions we made along the way, and why, and what the impact has been; provide concrete examples of the thought processes and workflows involved in moving from existing non-RDF metadata to RDF, based on the principles of linked data; provide an update on progress to date; reflect on lessons learned and outline next steps.