Why Metadata?
Why Me?
Why Now?
“Because
it is inescapable and seemingly more evident every day; because it is what we
are about; and finally, because not only do we need metadata as another tool in
our network of tools to do what we do, but metadata needs us to help fully
realize its potential.” This is how Schottlaender answers these questions – Why
metadata? Why me? Why now? – though he goes into further detail answering these
questions in his article. Fluidity is the first emphasized element of
information Schottlaender discusses.
Since data is always changing online, resources are complex, and
individual components require management, which reflects the environment of
metadata – “structured, encoded data that describes characteristics of
information-bearing entities to aid in the identification, discovery, assessment,
and management of the described entities.”
Schottlaender,
from there, goes on to define and discuss encoding schema, metadata schema, and
architectural schema. His preferred definition of schema is “a set of rules for
encoding information that supports specific communities of users.” There are
numerous encoding schema, but Schottlaender chooses to focus on MARC (MAchine
Readable Cataloging), which is the standard structure for encoding cataloging
data – most often bibliographic and authority data; SGML (Standard Generalized
Markup Language), an international standard that specifies a method for
describing the structure of a specific document; HTML (HyperText Markup
Language), which is based on SGML, but intended for marking up hypertext,
multimedia, and reasonable small, simple documents; XML (Extensible Markup
Language), which is the medium between HTML and SGML – a simplified subset of
SGML intended for Web applications.
Metadata
schema are just as numerous (descriptive, administrative, technical, rights and
personal information, commercial management, content rating, and preservation),
but the author focuses solely on descriptive metadata. The most famous
descriptive metadata schema is the Dublin Core (Dublin Metadata Core Element
Set), which is a core set of elements meant to be used to describe and
facilitate discovery of document-like objects in a networked environment.
Schottlaender emphasizes “document-like objects”, because the digital
information universe is full of non document-like objects that the Dublin Core
may or may not be able to describe. There are also specific descriptive schema
for specific documents:
- AGLS (Australian Government Locator Service) – government documents
- REACH (Record Export for Art and Cultural Heritage) – art documents
- TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) – document types within SGML
- EAD (Encoded Archival Description) – document types within SGML
These
metadata schema tend to focus on syntax (i.e. When you describe an object, you
should be sure to include in that description its title, creator, etc.), but
rarely tell a user how to do that. Another important, highly concentrated
descriptive metadata type are “identifiers.” Upon hearing “identifiers, I wasn’t
expecting to recognize any of these, but any book lover or student will know
International Standard Book Numbers (ISBN) and International Standard Serial
Numbers (ISSN) from their book searches.
Schottlaender then discusses three
architectural schema, the Interoperability of Data in E-Commerce Systems
(INDECS) – integration a variety of standards developed by communities that
concern themselves with copyright, Resource Description Framework (RDF) – an
infrastructure for “encoding, exchange, and reuse of structure metadata, and
the Warwick Framework – a container architecture for diverse sets of metadata. He
also begins to discuss why catalogers should be in the forefront of the
metadata movement. Cataloging is about access, describing content, and content
relationships. It is an “invisible process of order-making” that is not about
rules, nor about the records created because of those rules, but instead about
standards, vocabulary development, and the development of systems for
description and classification.
I agree with Schottlaender’s conclusion
that the ever-changing, non-fixable data of the digital age requires cataloger
intervention and organization. This was an informative article that I feel all
information organizers, catalogers, librarians, etc. should read. It offers a
lot of information and insight to the multiple aspects of metadata. This is a
great intro into metadata, and makes the case for a marriage between
non-library communities and catalogers – there are always information to
organize, and if there are specialists that can offer insight into non-library
fields, we can extend our help into different patron populations and get
information into the hands of those that need them, which is the purpose of
information workers.
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For more information, check out the full article (citation below)!
Schottlaender, B.E.C. (2003). Why metadata? Why me? Why now?. Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 36(3/4):19-29.
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