Libraries use repeated values to always denote each entity or group of entities in a specific way. When resources have metadata elements with the exact same value, their correlation is made obvious, making the retrieval of all matching metadata records easier. The library uses guidelines on which metadata elements should only use controlled terms, and how these values will be selected. In this paper, we study the use of the repeated values in many collections and also their effectiveness when all the collections are used together. We discovered values that are repeated often and values that are unusual, misused or just rare. Many metadata elements may use controlled terms as values, although they are traditionally used mostly in some of them. We see the differences on the use of the Dublin Core elements. The lack of coordination among collections results to many variations for each value. The study reveals the current usage of repeated values in active collections and helps adopting better guidelines, designing better tools and improving the effectiveness of the collections.