Notes for Week 5 Required Readings

Anne J. Gilliland. Introduction to Metadata, pathways to Digital Information: 1: Setting the Stage
http://www.getty.edu/research/publicationa/electronic_publications/intrometadata/setting.pdf

This reading gives me a general idea about metadata, what it means, and introduces its history and development. What interests me most in this chapter is how metadata works in information organizations, such as libraries and museums.

Generally speaking, metadata is "data about data", it is anything that can be used to describes objects (information), including the content, the context, and the structure. More specifically, for libraries and museums, when speaking of metadata, it is an emphasis on how to provide and enhance access to value-added information and collection materials.

There are several important aspects of metadata.

• Data Standards - for shared cataloging and exchange of descriptive data.
• Structure - with the development of computer-processing capabilities, the role of structure has been growing. Specifically, the more highly structured an information objects is, the more that structure can be exploited for searching, manipulation, and interrelating with other information objects.

Also, we should notice that "Metadata can be, and should be considered more inclusively conceptualized". By support this point of view, the author gives us several examples about different types of people's ways to think of metadata. Therefore, theory and practices can be vary due to the differing professional and cultural missions.

Moreover, except explains several primary functions of metadata, the author also reveals some little known facts about it, which is really refreshing to me. The following two are the most surprising facts to me.

• Metadata does not have to be digital.
• Except the description of an object, metadata can also indicate the context, management, processing, preservation and structure.

Eric J. Miller. An overview of the Dublin Core Data Model.
http://dublincore.org/1999/06/06-overview/

This article gives us an introduction about an incomplete work, the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI). It explains DCMI's requirements, basics, and what they did to support the DCMI. I got the general idea about what is this DCMI for. However, I still felt lost about those technical parts mentioned in this article.

• According to the author, DCMI is designed to foster consensus across disciplines for the discovery-oriented description of diverse resources in an electronic environment.

Julie Meloni. Using Mendeley for Research Management.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/using-mendeley-for-research-management/25627

This article introduces a research management tool, Mendeley.

Key features

• Organize - indexes and organizes your own document collections into a bibliography.
• Share - also works as a social network, stay up to date with what other people in your field are reading.
• Discover - "navigate the web of knowledge", discover the "most reads".