Metadata at the Core of Web 3.0

About a month ago, I met with my dissertation committee for my first year review in the Technical Communication and Rhetoric PhD program. When they asked me what topics of research interest me, I responded with two things, the first a "first" choice, and the second as a secondary research field.

The first: A study of how the capitalist economic system and Western legal systems will have to change to accommodate a Web 3.0 world. The committee expressed boredom and skepticism with this topic.

The second: A study of how metadata affects consumption of digital materials; more important, an examination into how metadata will not only be key to what shapes Web 3.0, but also about how different disciplines should combine to improve metadata creation practices. One of the committee members jumped out of her chair in excitement, proclaiming, "THAT'S web 3.0!"

So the second topic it is.

It's taken me a month to write about this because I've been thinking it over. I'm reading up on information architecture, and I'd like to know why metadata to a cataloger is so much more important than, say, metadata to a web designer, when, in reality, it should be of utmost importance to both.

And usability and metadata. My dissertation director has mentioned a few times now about how he'd like to conduct some sort of usability study on metadata. How should that be shaped? Where does usability fit into metadata, aside from the obvious, "I was able to find it, therefore it's usable."

But what makes me think of all this now is that I often hear people discuss how there are no metadata standards, or few metadata standards, or the standards aren't very good, or how there need to be grant-funded programs to create metadata standards. What exists right now? Why is it broken? What do we do to fix it? Who should write it to begin with--and who should be fixing what exists? How do we go about preserving it? These are important questions to ask because, if standards is a state- and nation-wide issue, then obviously, the metadata we're seeing right now isn't sufficient. What more must be done?

Thank you, Carol, for making me type some of these questions up here.

For What It's Worth

As I discussed Liz Bishoff's article, I got to thinking about how good teamwork at an institution-level contributes to digitization. Every person at an institution is a stakeholder in digitization, whether s/he is the subject matter expert (SME), the metadata librarian, the digitization coordinator, the student assistant who scans, or the colleague of any of these people. Each person has a role to play.

It is important for each member of a team to recognize his/her role.

I have begun creating workflows for each unit that will be participating in the digitization process. (I got this process started with Dr. Warner, and now I've kind of taken it and run.) These are very basic checklists that give stakeholders a place to say, "I've done this part of the the project."

Here is the digital department workflow:
Workflow Checksheet for TTU SWC/SCL Digitization Projects


1. __________ Select item
a. Name of item ________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________


2. __________ Notify Digitization Staff member and Student Assistant
3. __________ Raw scans done
4. __________ Quality control (Student Assistant)
5. __________ Quality control (Digitization Staff Member)
6. __________ Quality control (Subject Matter Expert)
7. __________ OCR
a. Deskew ______
b. Resize ______
8. __________ Subject Matter Expert and Cataloger notified that metadata needs to be added.
9. __________ Cataloger adds metadata.
10. __________ Item ready to upload.
11. __________ Upload complete


This is very, very basic stuff. Not anything earth-shaking. But I've started creating things like this to assist with project management, to keep the ball rolling, so to speak. This way, any time an object is first scanned, for instance, a checksheet travels with the object at every step.

Another issue in teamwork that is less obvious, but just as critical, is communication. It is important that teams overcome any sort of personality disputes, and in particular that members in teams avoid backstabbing other members to the rest of the team; this can be just as detrimental to the process as not having all members involved. In a way, I'd argue that it's even worse because, once all members are ostensibly working as a team, and then one member starts Stabby McBackstabbersonning another member to the entire team, the whole team risks becoming defunct. This is, in essence, a communication problem, and these types of communication problems can be headed off when someone clearly expresses an intent to work professionally with each member of the group--no matter what--and when the rest of the group can at least recognize that and stifle backstabbing behavior of one or two members of the team.

I think of this example because I remember a conversation with a friend who now teaches out at Central Florida. (Buy her book; she's a famous author http://www.amazon.com/Hilltop-Native-Storiers-American-Narratives/dp/0803226349/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1268863629&sr=8-1) We were talking about classroom dynamics and misbehaving students in class. She said that what she tries to do is to be a good enough leader to her students that the other students recognize bad behavior in a rowdy student to the point where they, rather than she, will correct the student's behavior. If a digitization team has a strong enough leader, that person can at least rely on the team to guide squeaky wheels along. In part I think it has to do with a leader recognizing that each person, no matter his/her behavior, has a skillset to contribute to digital projects; in addition to preventing the team leader from becoming overly frustrated or upset, it also gives other team members a sense of purpose and self-worth--to the point of defending the team as a whole when the squeaky wheel makes inaccurate statements about the project, the team, or the leader.

Observations on how people communicate.

Sometimes, the world is a cool place to live in becuase of folks like this

URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/16/jobcentre_jedi/

Really, just read the article. It's fabulous.

Carol's Blog, "Metadata, Cataloging, and Various Librarian-Like Stuff"

URL: http://carolslib.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/metadata-shemtadata/ (Linked in title.)

My friend Carol, who works at a library services company training folks to learn how to create and work with metadata, has started her own blog about metadata and cataloging. In addition Carol is my fiercest Scrabble competitor. She regularly beats me, in fact.

But, aside from Scrabble, Carol has some important ideas to get across about metadata. I've enjoyed reading through her blog so far.

"These aren't the droids you're looking for."

Except to brag about what a great week and a weekend it's been, there is little of value in this post. I just housed two of my closest friends and their three year old all week, and we had a ton of fun; my feline, Wulfram, is inconsolable that the child has left. I think three year olds are the most charming energy vampires in existence.

After cleaning house and doing laundry, I got to conclude the week with building a new computer--for myself, have needed a new desktop for a while; planting rose bushes (I'm attempting to start a rose garden); and making buttery buttermilk biscuits. It's spring, finally! Also, unless we get a late hard freeze, I should have peaches this year. (Playing in the yard is so buzz-worthy!)

It's been a great opportunity to put my brain into a cabinet and tell it to stop thinking. Well, there was a little trouble with installing the AMD CPU, but once I had the correctly-sized screws, the brain went back into the cabinet.

As I was digging the hole for the rosebushes, I kept trying to think of something profoundly Zen that connected building a computer, making biscuits, and planting, but all I could think of was a song by Chris Sand, Sandman, the Rappin' Cowboy, "Holedigger." "Diggin' holes don't pay the bills. I guess I do it for the thrills." (Here's a link to his site, though "Holedigger" isn't among the listed songs.) His best, most fun album hands-down is the one on which "Holedigger" appears.

Soon, pretty flowers will be appearing--purple and coral.

Also soon, I will return to server and software posts.

Collaboration or collaborators?

Interesting article from the Winter 2009 Texas Library Journal, "Seven Keys to Sustainable Digital Collaboratives," by Liz Bishoff
http://www.txla.org/CE/Collaboration/Bishoff.pdf

Quoting from the article, "Collaboration virtually unifies
content that is distributed across multiple owners, allows
organizations to capitalize on strengths of diverse organizations,
and takes advantage of economies of scale. As a result, many
funders will give preference to collaborative to proposals where
all other things are equal."

Very true. Very interesting. Looking at the big picture, I can bluntly and with complete veracity state that, if collaboration doesn't occur in digitization, we're going to lose major portions of our cultural heritage. This brings us back to my earlier question of what would I have saved had it been the year 764. Fortunately, there's no imperative to make that decision--but it might be a good idea to recognize that we have a lot of resources, both technological, human, and artifactual, that must be incorporated and considered in digitization.

(Which Bishoff seems to be highlighting, though it is only a highlight.)

As I've been observing digital collaboration, I am an outsider coming from an IT and technical communication background; I'm trying to "break into" the field, though my main purposes in doing so is to recognize how communication needs to be improved, how workflow should be developed and managed, and where skillsets currently are being wasted. In some ways, I'd even argue that so many digital collaboratives fail not because the resources were lacking, but because no one recognized they existed or could figure out how to engage them. And there is the angle of politics in academia.

The most important step in collaboration is getting all participants to recognize that the final product is most important; the other reason most collaboratives fail (not just in digitization but in any sort of team effort) is that individuals are too busy competing to recognize that the integrity of the end product is the only thing that is important. In digitization, the reason the integrity is important is because the end product is what we pass on to our heirs. If we collaborate well, we'll leave a strong cultural history for future generations, and if we collaborate poorly, well, what will future generations think?

Time to Pay for that (free) TC Degree

I've spent the past few days researching grant opportunities and extant partnerships amongst institutions in the State of Texas. Now I need to apply this work toward applying for a grant. I plan to focus on getting funded digitization for a small-sized project, something that appears to be unique amongst current Texas digital collections; it is also a collection that both the subject matter expert and I believe will draw a wide teaching audience.

The field of technical communication and rhetoric is apparently known for producing students who are good at writing grants. Since I have not had the opportunity to take the TC grant-writing course at my university, I will have to be creative and persuasive in my argumentation, and I will have to try to write a document that is free of flaws and written with strong elocution.

In short, I'll try to write good. I'm excited. The research I've done on extant partnerships and grant recipients in Texas basically tells me that there is a dark void in West Texas, as far as digitization grants go, and it also seems that most institutions that receive grants are in large cities for corporate- or urban-based collections. (There are a handful of grants that fund large institutions to digitize small communities' materials.) But I haven't seen very much in regard to digitization of things like what we have here at the SWC/SCL.

Researching grants appears to be similar to researching inventions, or even to researching arguments. What makes one invention unique or relevant? Why should an organization fund this invention?

These are very minor, small, initial questions. As with everything, only time can tell the story of who receives funding and who gets stepped on by the Jolly Green Giant.



Oh, and this is a nifty link about the oldest writing in the world and where it was found.

German High Court Restricts E-mail and Phone Data Retention

This could prove interesting--I'm sure it will come up again.

"The government's commissioner for data protection and freedom of information needed to be included in the process of controlling the use of the data, it said. The information could only be used in secret "if that is necessary in individual cases and ordered by a judge," Papier said.

The ruling follows a warning by the government that private sector Internet companies such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft need to be more transparent about the personal data they store on Web users."

Google Patents Location-Based Advertising

Here we go, it's Web 3.0, coming to get us. As soon as you sign on, rather than receiving ads for some random company, Google will now advertise a tea shop to you if you're searching for drinks with your Android in the middle of London, or a silk worm factory if you're hanging out in Thailand trying to find a cloth distributor. According to the link above, this also gives power of price arbitration. It will be interesting to see how online companies like Amazon will be affected by this. Of course, a company like Amazon is large enough that they probably won't have troubles, but smaller companies might.