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.
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OMG! BINGO! You say
ReplyDelete"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."
ME TOO!!! Yes, yes yes! And yes! It should be important to anyone who wants material to be discoverable (websites, eBooks, CDs, photographs, etc. etc.).
In library-land there are standards and the standards they are a'changin'. But why cannot we have an ISO standard? Something that is universally true? Diane Hillmann and Karen Coyle and many others are working on creating vocabularies and foundations for such things.
Oh what an exciting (and occasionally frustrating) time it is! I look forward to reading more from you - you're stimulating my little grey cells.