Metadata Imperatives

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John Kunze A Metadata Kernel for Electronic
Permanence (2001) http//www.nii.ac.jp/dc2001/proc
eedings/product/paper-27.pdf
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• Metadata Imperatives
• Macquarie UniversityMarch 12th 2003
• Jon Mason jmason_at_educationau.edu.au

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Subject
Metadata Imperatives
Keywords
Metadata, meta-tags, context, Macquarie
University, 2003, debate, AESHareNet, standards,
debate, Powerpoint presentation, value-chains,
information economy, structured information,
interoperability, HTML, XML, RDF, RSS, IEEE, DC,
..
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(No Transcript)
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My Position

• To Meta-Tag or Not to Meta-Tag dumbs-down the
  discourse on metadata
• The Information Economy has only just begun -
  metadata is integral to it
• Knowledge Management perspectives are
  increasingly important

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The Explanation

• Advocacy
• Why imperatives?
• Meta-tagging just one consideration
• Forms of metadata
• Context
• information economy KM perspectives
• information learning learning technologies
• Metadata standards protocols
• Questions

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Imperatives? What for Why

• Organising information
• for subsequent discovery retrieval
• to enable data interchange
• separating content-structure-presentation
• Participating in the digital economy
• networked environment (diverse complex)
• information relationships
• economic value-chains based on value creation
  rather than value extraction
• Organising knowledge

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Imperatives? How Metadata creation

• Keyword Craft
• Abstract (description) construction
• Standard classifications
• Standard schemas
• Standard encodings

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Forms of Metadata

• Surface (eg, web page last updated)
• Embedded
• as HTML META tags
• as custom XML tags (metadata-rich markup)
• Detached
• in repositories of catalogued information
• RDF statements (relationship-rich)
• RSS channels
• Formally defined standards protocols
• Dublin Core (ANSI Z39.85)
• IEEE LOM (IEEE 1484.1-2002)
• METS (Metadata Encoding Transmission Standard)

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Forms of Metadata (2)

• Descriptive (aboutness)
• Structural
• linking or organising content chunks into
  aggregates(printed books are relatively
  self-organising e-content can have infinitely
  assigned structural maps)
• Administrative
• eg, managing catalogues
• metadata IP meta-metadata
• File Groups
• associating content chunks
• Behaviour
• rule-based
• (METS - http//www.loc.gov/standards/mets/ )

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Context time place

• Information depends on context to convey meaning
• Information Economy
• data, information, knowledge all intermeshed
• one persons content is anothers data
• Web services environment
• Learning, Education Training
• complex adaptive systems
• tasks describing, accessing, exchanging
  managing educational resources
• What is content?

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context
Complex Adaptive Systems
Recursive Cycles
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Ongoing Questions

• How best to encode context?
• separate from content (eg., EML, EAD, EAC)
• embedded within descriptive metadata?
• include in Audience descriptions?
• include in Activity descriptions?
• Knowledge Management considerations
• Is completeness of description possible?
• How to achieve interoperability?
• DC, ERC, LOM HTML, XML, RDF,
• Semantic Web (semantics syntax)
• balancing generalist specific classifications

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Knowledge Management Perspectives
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Knowledge Management Perspectives
Know