Reading Notes: Week 4 Metadata in Digital Libraries

Anne J. Gilliland. Introduction to Metadata, pathways to Digital Information: 1: Setting the Stage http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/standards/intrometadata/setting.html

Metadata: "the sum total of what one can say about any information object at any level of aggregation."

ALL information objects have three features - content, context, and structure - all of which can be reflected through metadata:
Content relates to what the object contains or is about, and is intrinsic.
Context indicates the who, what, why, where, how aspects associated with the object's creation and is extrinsic.
Structure relates to the formal set of associations within or among individual information objects and can be intrinsic or extrinsic.

Library metadata includes indexes, abstracts, and catalog records, according to cataloging rules and structural and content standards such as MARC,(as well as authority forms such as LCSH or the AAT (Art & Architecture Thesaurus). Such bibliographic metadata has been cooperatively created since the ‘60s and available to repositories and users through automated systems such as bibliographic utilities, OPACs, and online databases.

Archival and manuscript metadata: accession records, finding aids, and catalog records. Archival descriptive standards that have been developed the past two decades: MARC Archival and Manuscript Control (AMC) format published by the LoC(1984) (now integrated into the MARC format for bibliographic description); the General International Standard Archival Description (ISAD (G)) published by International Council on Archives (1994); & Encoded Archival Description EAD), adopted as a standard by the Society of American Archivists (SAA) in 1999.

metadata:
certifies the authenticity and degree of completeness of the content;
establishes and documents the context of the content;
identifies and exploits the structural relationships that exist between and within information objects;
provides a range of intellectual access points for an increasingly diverse range of users; and
provides some of the information an information professional might have provided in a physical reference or research setting.
metadata provides a Rosetta Stone to decode information objects into knowledge information systems of the 21st century and provides an base to translate between systems.

Stuart L. Weibel, “Border Crossings: Reflections on a Decade of Metadata Consensus Building”, D-Lib Magazine, Volume 11 Number 7/8, July/August 2005 http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july05/weibel/07weibel.html

A personal reflection on some of the achievements and lessons as part of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative management team: The goal – a starting place for more elaborate description schemes.
What then, is metadata for?
harvest and index.
Metadata for images, useful, associating images with text makes them discoverable.

The Mongolian/Chinese railroad gage dilemma: interoperability challenge across and suffering a measure of broken semantics in the process.

The Web demands an international, multicultural approach to standards and infrastructure, but should they be large brush stroke standards or a light set?

Question: Weibel mentions Google in reference to international standards definitions. Is their a relationship between search engine groups and Dublin core, OCLC, and academic databases in the development of international standards?