Hi,
I work as a librarian and I'm responsible for the thesis department of my university library. Thesis are deposited and archived as PDF files. Some of them are accessible online, some are not.
I was advised to systematically fill the "Title" and "Author" metadata for every PDF deposited in our electronic despository.
My question has to do with the "Author" metadata. Is there a recommended structure for it ?
As it is I can think of many different alternatives :
Firstname Lastname
Lastname Firstname
Lastname, Firstname
etc.
As a librarian, my intuition was to choose the Lastname, Firstname format (used in DC author/creator element, for example), but I realized that whenever I saved the PDF file and then displayed the metadata part (via the Alt D shortcut), it would show "Lastname, Firstname" instead of Lastname, Firstname (for an unknown reason Adobe Pro adds " "). After some tests I came to the conclusion that the coma was the source of the problem. So I changed my mind and adopted the Lastname Firstname format but I am not sure that this is the best option.
So if I may ask you a couple of questions, here they are :
- What format do you recommend for the Author metadata (if any) ?
- Why is a coma generating " " ?
- Is there a specific separator character that I must use when I need to fill two different names (if a given thesis has been written by two different persons) ? (this question also applies to the "Keywords" metadata)
Thanks for your patience and for your time,
Cheers,
JHM
