Metadata (Coursera, Fall 2013)
Metadata Coursera Taught by Jeffery Pomerantz
https://class.coursera.org/metadata-001
Unit 1: Organizing Information
metadata -- "data about data"; description
world divided into natural and artificial objects; physical and digital
describing: make a statement about something -- subject, object, and predicate (relationship between subject and object)
data and information are not interchangeable terms
metadata is description
instructions are not necessarily descriptive
what is descripton?
access points to materials: title, author, subjects
administrative metadata: how to manage or care for something
subject analysis: figuring out the subject ("significant characteristics") of the thing you're describing
- how to describe something that doesn't have a subject, like music?
aboutness: word used sometimes instead of "subject"
item: single object
collection: collection of objects
LCSH: Library of Congress Subject Headings; data about subject headings on copyright page; attempts to be comprehensive; changes over time; thesaurus or controlled vocabulary; includes relationship but not synonymy and antonymy
subject headings, index term, descriptor: all mean "subject"
LOC classification used outside the US; call number of books
medical subject headings (MeSH): used in medicine
BT: broader term
NT: narrower term
UF: "use for"
USE: "use"
faceted classification: can describe using multiple controlled vocabularies
ontology: formal representation of a set concept within a domain; defining categories and relationships (including inferences -- one relationship implies another, as in parent-child)
relationships are more complicated in ontologies than in thesauri -- is more than a thesaurus, is also about relationships and inferences
uncontrolled vocabulary: no thesaurus exists
hashtags: ride the line between metadata and content itself
- tagdef, defining hashtags
vocabularies as maps -- simply the world
Alfred Korzybski: "The map is not the territory." -- but the map is more useful under certain conditions
types of metadata:
- descriptive: information about a resource
- structural: how an object is organized (often used for compound objects, like a book [chapters, sections pages])
- administrative: how an object should be stored or cared for (copyright, access permission, origin)
distinctions in metadata record:
- item vs collection
- embedded vs linked metadata records; copyright page in printed book is embedded metadata; library card catalogue is linked metadata
- human-readable vs machine-readable audience; MARC records, machine-readable cataloguing
'data' has flexible definition
information science: intersection of information, technology, people
what is information?
"Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge / Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?" -- T. S. Eliot, "The Rock"
"Information as Thing," by Michael Buckland
- three types of information: information-as-thing; information-as-knowledge; information-as-process
- information as thing is evidence
is information subjective objective?
- DNA example
Michael Buckland, "What is a Document?"
- antelope is not a document, but becomes a document when the subject of research
perception generates metadata
Gregory Bateson, information is "a difference that makes a difference"