Metadados para descrição de documentos remanescentes de fundo eclesiástico: uma proposta de metadados e biblioteca digital para os assentos de batismo, casamento e óbito da Matriz do Pilar de Ouro Preto

Abstract

The present dissertation proposes a metadata scheme to create a digital library composed by ecclesiastics documents of the catholic church named Matrix of Pilar (Matriz do Pilar de Ouro Preto), situated in Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais, Brazil. These documents, considered manuscripts, are wedding seats, baptisms and death certifications. The main viewpoint of this work is the documents preservation process. The increasing growth and usage of digital technologies, as a form to make available information, combined with the absence of a methodology that allows a metadata scheme to describe this kind of documents, indicates the need of metadata that considers the biggest number of documents access points for a digital library. The present research adopts an experimental approach in three specific stages: contacts with the documents fund; exhaustive reading of the microfilmed documents to identify metadata; and the use of a computer software to create a prototype of digital library. In the process of metadata identification that includes the analysis of documents about wedding, baptism and death certificate, it is worked with a specific documents sample, according with statistical methods, having as source the microfilms of the House of Tales of Ouro Preto (Casa dos Contos de Ouro Preto). The results of this work includes: metadata scheme for manuscripts description and retrieval, according with the Dublin Core model; list of concepts/subjects found in the documents; model of database related to this data collection; and a prototype of a digital library, using specific software. As theoretical and contextual fundaments are included: description of documents; document production context; the use of documents through the years; administrative and religious societies; digital treatment of information, including metadata concepts; information retrieval systems; U.S Machine Readable Cataloguing Format, MARC, Dublin Core (simplified MARC) and digital libraries concepts.