Speaking of Discipline(s)

I am currently pursuing a PhD in Technical Communication and Rhetoric. What in the world does that mean?

Technical communication is the umbrella under which technical writing falls. Technical writing itself fills a very recent gap that opened during the mid- to late-1800s; this gap grew even larger with rapid technological innovations. These new technologies led to a need for people to be able to communicate how to work with them. Engineers aren't writers; writers aren't engineers. There needed to be some sort of bridge-people who could liaison between technology, engineers' information, and the regular person.

Technical communication became a full-blown field of study with the availability of graduate degrees, with the inclusion of critical theory into the discipline, and with the growing need for research rigor. (How, for instance, do I know that my documentation about the development of a server is functional without testing it on other people? That would require research.)

With the .net boom, technical communication has enjoyed a heyday--so many people who use computers and the Internet need to know how to do specific functions. So much information can be tracked about what people are doing as they interface with technology. These are things that a technical communicator can study, interpret, and convey.

Metadata. Where does metadata fit in?

At the moment, the field of technical communication conflates social tagging with metadata. I have read a lot about technical communicators' conception of metadata, and I've discussed it with other technical communicators, and everyone thinks that social tagging=metadata. They don't realize a few things.

Controlled vocabulary.
Authority.
The role of metadata in digital preservation.
Digital preservation. (Where will all this stuff we've written be in 10 years? 20 years?)

Right now, I plan to put these pieces together so that disciplines besides Library Science can understand how metadata, digital preservation, Web surfing, and social inter-function.

What is digital preservation?

Question: What is digital preservation?

A) Digital preservation is the process by which a bitstream (file, piece of data, etc.) is saved for prosperity by backing it up onto tape media and placing that tape into a basement.

B) Digital preservation is a series of steps and checks to ensure that descriptive information (metadata anyone?) accompanies a bitstream, and that the master file is continually verified to ensure integrity into an approximate number of years until integrity changes, and that access version and master file are completely separate.

C) Digital preservation thinks toward how a file can be maintained for the next 100-200 years.

Well, of course the longest answer is the correct answer. I'm researching curation micro-services right now, and if you're curious about a much more precise definition of digital preservation, Dorothea Salo and her gang at Sciencetopia know so much more about it than I do--and I think they're much more professional in how they define it.

Either way, the idea is that digital preservation isn't just "let's back up a file." While yes, file backup is the most basic level of preservation--the first step--it is by no means the last. The entire goal of digital preservation is to create a series of steps that commit, dedicate some of your resources for a certain amount of time, toward the goal of ensuring file (and all accompanying information about that file) integrity until a new and improved (!) technology comes out. Sometimes one can say, "I will do this for one year until I know more about this process," and sometimes one can say, "I commit myself and my available resources--personnel, hardware, software environment--for at least 5 years because I know this is the most applicable method for my organization."

There are many librarians out there who can express all of this in much better language than I can, and they can also explain to you what things like reference requests for master files means, can define the repository concept for you, and can elaborate on technical metadata versus descriptive metadata. I am not going to explain checksum scripting or the issues with tying information together into a database.

Digital preservation is a commitment to a series of steps. This is all I want to get across here. Perhaps later, if you, dear reader, are very, very good, I'll discuss the role of metadata in digital preservation.

If you run a Windows machine, disable the server service

The Qakbot worm is out there, and it's doing a lot of damage on affected machines.

If you run a Windows system, be sure to disable the server service.

Instructions can be found here, at this person's blog. (I do not know this person, but the instructions seem pretty good.)

I promise you will have relatively few security issues if you disable the server service. Also consider disabling the remote registry service and the computer browser service. Indexing service will improve your performance somewhat, though that's not a huge problem on machines these days.

Server service=Bad. Disable it.

I am not promising it will fix all your problems--you're still human, and you'll still make dumb choices as you surf the web. The disabled server service is just a good preventative measure for instances where you can't necessarily predict the security of the web, even if you're on sites as "innocent" as Facebook or Google.

Focusing

If I'm going to turn the scope onto usability testing and meta-information (metadata, information architecture, the "belly of the beast," so to speak), then I need to do a couple of things.

First I must answer, what does usability testing measure.

Second, I must define how metadata functions in the user experience.

Third, I must make a case for why metadata functionality should play a role in the user experience; for instance, if a user is going to search directly for a single item in a website, then why would s/he need to understand the navigability of the site itself?

Does this affect arrangement of finding aids on archival websites? How should arrangement of finding aids be affected, versus should we bother with that?

Finally, I'll need to shape the definition of usability testing to also encompass metadata usability.

What does usability test?

Usability, for the purposes of my research interests, measures the functionality of software or a website for people to achieve the purposes for which it was intended and created. Usability tests how graphics and text interact on the image of the page; it tests whether the right words attach to the correct kind of link; it measures how effective specific text is.

Usability testing is not, however, interested in meta-information. I very deliberately choose to call this "meta-information" because I'm approaching the original idea of "meta," and I want to separate "metadata" and all its connotations from this, for right now. Meta-narrative, for instance, is the narrative outside a text that elucidates the text. Metaphysics deals with transcendence from science.

Meta-DATA deals with the outside data, that yes, is descriptive to a website, but that is also representative of a website as a whole; meta-DATA is "beyond" the site; meta-DATA is NOT the site; and in fact, META-data is that which pulls users into a site, though they never actually SEE the means by which they are pulled (metadata).

I've talked to a lot of metadata librarians who keep telling me--whom I wouldn't blame of they get slightly annoyed at my questioning--"Metadata is just a tool." (And I say this fondly because I feel friendship and gratitude for all my metadata librarian friends. I've had such fascinating conversations with them, and their patience is something for which I also have undying gratitude.)

While I agree, metadata is a tool, I also agree that my car is only a tool, a means by which I drove from Lubbock to Austin this past week. As I drove, I stopped and took photographs of windmills between Fluvana and Sweetwater; I pulled off to look at cemeteries when they were marked; after arriving in Austin, I ventured out to Barton Springs one evening and sat on a boulder to watch the rain as it fell in the water.

Let's look at the verbs that the tool, my car, allowed me to use here: "to drive" (in a car), "to stop" (in a car); "to pull off," "to arrive," "to venture." That car is one heck of a tool. Albeit, it is a tool, but it is the tool by which I was able to explore a lot.

I assert that metadata is similarly powerful. Perhaps metadata is only a tool, but I argue that it is the highway by which we access information.* If usability tests structure, functionality, layout, even information architecture of a website, should it not also test usability of the meta-information attached to a website?** Also, while libraries and archives, in digitization, recognize that metadata is important and useful, industry has not started to recognize this--and I do wonder if units of digitization actually do usability testing on the metadata itself. I've heard of libraries running usability tests on their website, but I have only heard of libraries putting together focus groups for search engine ranking improvement--rather than use testing of metadata itself. Even more, metadata is also a set of decisions created by a specific person or persons to limn how the website should be located by/present itself users. It's a powerful and deliberate decision set that brings a person from Chechnya to a website in Texas--perhaps just a tool, but a strong tool nonetheless.

(I had a long talk today with Dr. Still, my dissertation director, and this was what we went over.)

*(Do not mix my car metaphor with the highway metaphor. It's a dangerous thing to get caught in Ana's metaphor land.)

**Writing an article on this right now. Hope to send it out for publication soon.

What's the difference between an archive and a library?

I have so much to learn. In addition I have so much to learn about archives, libraries, technology, digital project management, digital collection curation, managing people to manage systems, improving efficiency while maintaining standards, creating a name for my institution in preparation for a Web 3.0 environment (which is emerging right in front of our eyes).

Okay, so, in short, I have a lot to learn.

I would like to start an interrogation at one question: What is the difference between archive and library?

There are more than one, so change that verb to "are" and since the subject should agree, make "difference" plural.

1) Library houses copies of data, to be handled, sneezed on, and generally mistreated; archive houses unique materials, to be handled in a controlled environment where sneezing is prevented and mistreatment frowned upon.

Unique materials. Copies of materials.

In learning about managing digital archival projects (special collections), I've been trying to piece together information from archivists, librarians, IT people, technical communicators, and researchers. And I have come up with two things:
A) It is important to make digital avatars of archival materials because this is the only way people might be able to access these materials. (And thus the materials should appear as similar as possible to the original.)
B) It is important to keep people's hands off the original materials. (For very practical, obvious reasons.)


2) In library, what gets scanned is often making a copy of a copy; while this is very important for research availability, the information scanned isn't really something that it is readily apparent must be preserved. In archive, the exact opposite is true--scanning and metadata are tied together, packaged up, and preserved whole, entirely with the goal in mind that this eventually might be the only extant copy of the item.
2B) Then, if library successfully does its job, would no items ever have to go into archive again? (Just a curiosity.)

3) Archive and Library metadata are very different. (Derr...)

4) Sometimes Library and Archive don't communicate or see eye-to-eye with one another in terms of digital practice. Or, sometimes library A will see eye-to-eye with archive B, while archive A and library B say this should not be the case.


What other differences and similarities can we come up with here?


I'm mulling over this one.

It takes a lot of people, though maybe it shouldn't be all cooks in the digital kitchen

The more I read about digital project management, the more I learn about how many people it takes to do things the Right Way. The Right Way requires a lot of people who specialize in very specific tasks, things that might be almost too narrow in the view of other professions. The Internet and digital project theory are changing so rapidly that I'm often overwhelmed at how much I have to learn about and attempt to put into practice.

In a way, one might ask the question, "Do you want to be changed, or be a force of change?" Or, Gandhi more applicably, "Be the change you see in the world." (I think.)