Finally, articles that I can understand. Well, sort of?! The Wikipedia article on databases was pretty prosaic and well, I guess this is an instance when I actually knew a little more about the subject matter.
The Metadata piece was very helpful because I have heard the term thrown around by librarians but nobody actually explained it in terms that I could comprehend. Well, let me take that back a bit. I understood what the term "meta" meant as a term, in and of itself. I could certainly derive the literal meaning of the term "metadata" to mean "data about data." In the past, I never quite understood how librarians used this term and the context with which they used it. It was like asking somebody to explain the meaning of a word and then having them use the word, in question, to describe its meaning...kind of like a metadefinition, ha!
As I am just now learning the vocabulary in the archival profession, the section in this article on metadata and the archival usage was of particular interest to me. The idea of "preserving context" is extremely important when creating finding aids and cataloguing materials. Metadata provides a framework within which this kind of work can be improved, if I understand the meaning of this activity.
I think that the process of developing standards to apply to data for better descriptive purposes is essential...the question it raises (leading me to the next article) is how does one actually reach consensus, especially on a global level, for this kind of standardization.
The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative must be the electronic resource management equivalent to the UN?! How can anybody reach consensus on this level, given the varied cultural, language and idiomatic factors at play. Standardization in this level must require an inordinate amount of patience. One has to wonder, if librarians and other information professionals can reach consensus on descriptors and semantic classifications shouldn't they be brought into resolve international crises?
The DCMI is fascinating to consider for ease of searching on the web. The article was also useful for providing additional information or illumination on other associated metadata organization, like Resource Description Framework (RDF) and Warwick Framework (WF).
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Robyn, I think you're absolutely right about the importance of metadata to archivists. Not only does metadata assist in preserving context, it also helps provide search criteria for archived records and track the use of those records. A useful quote from the Gilliland article: “…metadata not only identifies and describes an information object; it also documents how that object behaves, its function and use, its relationship to other information objects, and how it should be managed.”
Robyn,
I too just got what meta-data was. I think the value-added information that it provides is really the key to accessibility to objects.
Yeah, the DCMI sorta sounds like the UN.
The Dublin Core MetaData Initiative (DCMI) is hosting their annual meeting in Berlin next week, that's why their site was down. According to the OCLC article their first order of business is exactly what you asked about, their main goals are: "semantic clarification of the DCES" and "identify cross-common qualifiers to enrich descriptive requirements."
I bet the Agenda for this conference is twenty-pages long and very intense.
I'm often concerned when people take a word and add "meta" on the front of it without understanding what their talking about. That is probably why you could never get a straight answer as to what "metadata" was. But it is vital to the function of an archive. It can be especially vital in establishing a context with related documents.
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