understanding metadata: looking forward
TRANSCRIPT
Understanding Metadata: Looking Forward
Jenn Riley (@jenlrile)
Associate Dean, Digital Initiatives
McGill University Library and Archives
Metadata in everyday life
How it’s used in cultural heritage organizations
Types of metadata (descriptive, technical, structural, etc)
Storing and sharing metadata (databases, XML, RDF)
Standardization
Metadata languages used on the Web
Metadata languages used in the cultural heritage sector
Generating metadata
What’s covered
June 23, 2017 NISO-BISG Forum, ALA 2017
Understanding Metadata talks about a sea-change
June 23, 2017 NISO-BISG Forum, ALA 2017
"Full fathom five thy father lies,
Of his bones are coral made,
Those are pearls that were his eyes,
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change,
into something rich and strange,
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell,
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them, ding-dong, bell.”
--Shakespeare, The Tempest
Fueled by Linked Data technologies
https://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/lld/XGR-lld-vocabdataset-20111025/
So what’s different?
June 23, 2017 NISO-BISG Forum, ALA 2017
1. It’s not “our” data and “their” data – it’s one big graph.
June 23, 2017 NISO-BISG Forum, ALA 2017
It’s about the connections
https://linkedjazz.org/network/
2. The scale is growing. At Web pace.
June 23, 2017 NISO-BISG Forum, ALA 2017
http://hangingtogether.org/?p=4167; September 2014
3. There is no choice but to rely on more intelligence in the system.
June 23, 2017 NISO-BISG Forum, ALA 2017
We need to make use of the expert work being done
June 23, 2017 NISO-BISG Forum, ALA 2017
Image: http://researchhubs.com/
4. The information age has provided a new definition of “authority.”
June 23, 2017 NISO-BISG Forum, ALA 2017
https://inspiringnsw.org.au/2017/05/30/citizen-science-funding-boost-3/
5. Someone else is going to do it. For free. And very possibly even better.
LOTS better.
June 23, 2017 NISO-BISG Forum, ALA 2017
6. Open is an expectation.
June 23, 2017 NISO-BISG Forum, ALA 2017
June 23, 2017 NISO-BISG Forum, ALA 2017
Photo by Soraya S., https://flic.kr/p/78gW9T
Rethink workflows
Focus on the what rather than the how
Rethink business models
Commodification has evolved: Systems → Information → Intelligence
Seek orders of magnitude growth in integrations, not individual deals
Look for data we can use from elsewhere
Publish our data so others can use it
Follow standards, but don’t be paralyzed by them
What does this mean for us?
June 23, 2017 NISO-BISG Forum, ALA 2017
@jenlrile
These presentation slides: http://www.jennriley.com/presentations/alaannual2017/nisoForum.pptx
Understanding Metadata: http://www.niso.org/publications/press/understanding_metadata
Thank you!
June 23, 2017 NISO-BISG Forum, ALA 2017