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What is Metadata?

METADATA What Is It and What Can I Do With It? Vicki L. Gregory Associate Professor School of Library & Information Science University of South Florida gregory@luna.cas.usf.edu. What is Metadata?. Data about data A library catalog Database records from indexing and abstracting services

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What is Metadata?

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  1. METADATA What Is It and What Can I Do With It?Vicki L. GregoryAssociate ProfessorSchool of Library & Information ScienceUniversity of South Floridagregory@luna.cas.usf.edu

  2. What is Metadata? • Data about data • A library catalog • Database records from indexing and abstracting services • Metatags/descriptors for information available across a network

  3. If the Internet is to continue to thrive, “something very much like traditional library services will be needed to organize access and preserve networked information.” Clifford Lynch, Scientific American

  4. Information Retrieval on the Web: The Impossible Dream? • Super- or metacatalog? • Robot-generated indexes • Encoded text

  5. MARC is a Metadata Format • Advantage -- A way of integrating metadata into existing library systems • Disadvantage -- Personnel intensive

  6. Robot-Generated Indexes:Harvesting Information from Web Sites • HTML META tags • Attributes • CONTENT • HTTP-EQUIV • NAME • Example • <META NAME = “Keywords” CONTENT = “metadata, Dublin Core, TEI”> • <META NAME = “Description” CONTENT = “Discusses the concept of metadata, its various formats, and the strengths and weaknesses of each.”>

  7. Dublin Core • Enrichment of information about a document provided either by the author or a third party, such as a library cataloger • 15-element metadata setallowing metadata to be attached or embedded in a large number of Web documents

  8. Title Author Subject Description Publisher Contributor Date Type Format Identifier Source Language Relation Coverage Rights Dublin Core Elements

  9. Partial Example of Dublin Core • <meta NAME = “D.C. identifier” CONTENT = “http://www.cas.usf.edu/lis/lis6511/”> • <meta NAME = “D.C. author” CONTENT = “Vicki L. Gregory”> • <meta NAME = “D.C. subject” CONTENT = “collection development, selection, weeding, preservation, intellectual freedom”>

  10. Example (Continued) • <meta NAME = “D.C. description” CONTENT = A survey course dealing with all aspects of collection development and collection maintenance issues.”> • <meta NAME = “D.C. date” Content = “January 5, 1999”> • <meta NAME = “D.C. language” CONTENT = “English”> • <meta NAME = “D.C. format” CONTENT = “HTML”>

  11. Resource Description Framework (RDF) • Another effort to standardize description and resource discovery for the Web • Developed by World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) • Netscape and Microsoft have developed tools to accommodate RDF specifications

  12. U.S. Government Metadata Standards • FGDC’s CSDGM (Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata) • minus: very complex, over 300 • different elements with differing options for application • plus: allows sharing of data among geographic information systems.

  13. U.S. Government Metadata Standards • GILS (Government Information Locator Service) • Federal Depository libraries required to provide at least one GILS point of access to the public • GILS locator records may describe libraries, and, thus, incorporate them into the GILS system • Rich source of data co-searchable by Z39.50 online catalogs • GILS has incorporated MARC definitions with one-to-one mapping

  14. Human Selection • Selection according to stated criteria • Addition of descriptive metadata to aid in retrieval

  15. Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) • Humanities related text collections • Header element • contains bibliographic information about the attached document

  16. TEI Header • File Description • bibliographic information • Encoding Description • editing decisions when encoding document • Profile Description • languages used, setting, etc. • Revision Description • log of changes made

  17. TEI Header: Partial Example <TEIHEADER> <FILEDESC> <TITLESTMT> <TITLE TYPE = “245”> Blood of the Prophets / by Edgar Lee Masters as Dexter Wallace [electronic text]</TITLE> <AUTHOR> Masters, Edgar Lee, 1868-1950</AUTHOR> </TITLESTMT>

  18. TEI Example (Continued) <EXTENT> ca. 122 kb</EXTENT> <PUBLICATIONSTMT> <PUBLISHER>University of Michigan Humanities Text Initiative</PUBLISHER> <PUBPLACE> Ann Arbor, Mich. </PUBPLACE> </FILEDESC> <ENCODINGDESC> <EDITORIALDECI> <p> All poems, line groups, and lines are represented. Indentation and table of contents have been preserved. </P></EDITORIALDECI></TEIHEADER>

  19. Future of the TEI Header • Available to patrons on the Web by using XML, instead of having to convert to HTML (with corresponding loss of information details).

  20. Encoded Archival Description (EAD) • SGML DTD designed to reflect the structure of archival finding aids and the collections they describe. • Response to the need for hierarchical structure and highly contextual information that are part of the nature of archival information.

  21. Crosswalks • Mapping metadata sets • Concerns • data loss • reversibility • who owns and maintains a given map • map variants

  22. Metadata have an acknowledged role in the organization of and access to networked information. Prediction At some point in the relatively near future, catalogers will probably be creating metadata as commonly as they now do MARC records .

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