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

1. 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"