METADATA What Is It and What Can I Do With It? Vicki L. Gregory Associate Professor School of Library

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METADATA What Is It and What Can I Do With
It? Vicki L. GregoryAssociate
ProfessorSchool of Library Information
ScienceUniversity of South Floridagregory_at_luna.c
as.usf.edu
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What is Metadata?

• Data about data
• A library catalog
• Database records from indexing and abstracting
  services
• Metatags/descriptors for information available
  across a network

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• 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

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Information Retrieval on the Web The Impossible
Dream?

• Super- or metacatalog?
• Robot-generated indexes
• Encoded text

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MARC is a Metadata Format

• Advantage -- A way of integrating metadata into
  existing library systems
• Disadvantage -- Personnel intensive

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Robot-Generated IndexesHarvesting Information
from Web Sites

• HTML META tags
• Attributes
• CONTENT
• HTTP-EQUIV
• NAME
• Example
• ltMETA NAME Keywords CONTENT metadata,
  Dublin Core, TEIgt
• ltMETA NAME Description CONTENT Discusses
  the concept of metadata, its various formats, and
  the strengths and weaknesses of each.gt

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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 set allowing metadata to be
  attached or embedded in a large number of Web
  documents

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Dublin Core Elements

• Title
• Author
• Subject
• Description
• Publisher
• Contributor
• Date
• Type

• Format
• Identifier
• Source
• Language
• Relation
• Coverage
• Rights

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Partial Example of Dublin Core

• ltmeta NAME D.C. identifier CONTENT
  http//www.cas.usf.edu/lis/lis6511/gt
• ltmeta NAME D.C. author CONTENT Vicki L.
  Gregorygt
• ltmeta NAME D.C. subject CONTENT collection
  development, selection, weeding, preservation,
  intellectual freedomgt

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Example (Continued)

• ltmeta NAME D.C. description CONTENT A
  survey course dealing with all aspects of
  collection development and collection maintenance
  issues.gt
• ltmeta NAME D.C. date Content January 5,
  1999gt
• ltmeta NAME D.C. language CONTENT Englishgt
• ltmeta NAME D.C. format CONTENT HTMLgt

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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

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U.S. Government Metadata Standards

• FGDCs 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.

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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

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Human Selection

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

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Text Encoding Initiative (TEI)

• Humanities related text collections
• Header element
• contains bibliographic information about the
  attached document

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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

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TEI Header Partial Example

• ltTEIHEADERgt
• ltFILEDESCgt
• ltTITLESTMTgt
• ltTITLE TYPE 245gt Blood of the Prophets / by
  Edgar Lee Masters as Dexter Wallace electronic
  textlt/TITLEgt
• ltAUTHORgt Masters, Edgar Lee, 1868-1950lt/AUTHORgt
• lt/TITLESTMTgt

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TEI Example (Continued)

• ltEXTENTgt ca. 122 kblt/EXTENTgt
• ltPUBLICATIONSTMTgt
• ltPUBLISHERgtUniversity of Michigan Humanities Text
  Initiativelt/PUBLISHERgt
• ltPUBPLACEgt Ann Arbor, Mich. lt/PUBPLACEgt
• lt/FILEDESCgt
• ltENCODINGDESCgt
• ltEDITORIALDECIgt
• ltpgt All poems, line groups, and lines are
  represented. Indentation and table of contents
  have been preserved. lt/Pgtlt/EDITORIALDECIgtlt/TEIHEAD
  ERgt

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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).

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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.

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Crosswalks

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

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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 .