Week 5 Readings

Articles

Gilliland, A. J. (2008). Setting the Stage. In Introduction to Metadata, Second Edition. Retrieved September 24, 2013, from http://www.getty.edu/research/publications/electronic_publications/intrometadata/setting.html

             A. J. Gilliland’s (2008) take on metadata is all-encompassing. Rather than give a fixed definition of according to her profession, she chooses to acknowledge many different peoples’ impressions on “metadata” – from the metadata involving indexes, bibliographic records, and abstracts of libraries (Gilliland “Setting”) to the information encoded into HTML META tags encountered by the average Internet resource provider (Gilliland “Setting”). Such a method has its pros and cons. On the one hand, by including all of the interpretations, she provides a good basis for understanding the flexibility of metadata, its uses beyond one particular field, and what links and differentiates each profession’s metadata – an overview of the concept. On the other hand, though, she is providing a lot of information, maybe too much to adequately investigate particular aspects of metadata.
            One comment caught my attention, though; Gilliland notes that “it would seem to be a desirable goal” to join together various materials linked by provenance or subject but disseminated across museum, archives, and library repositories (Gilliland “Setting”). Would this be desirable? I’m not sure myself; if it could be done, it would make finding, organizing, and storing materials easier. It, however, would assume a “one size fits all” approach, disregarding the differences between the professions that would require different interests for each.

 

Miller, E. J. (1999, June 6). An Overview of the Dublin Core Data Model. Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. Retrieved from http://dublincore.org/1999/06/06-overview/
            While I was able to understand the underlying purpose of the article of examining the Dublin Core Data Model, I had a hard time focusing on the article as a whole. E. J. Miller (1999) got a little wordy at times. For example, in the first paragraph of the section “Semantic Refinement,” Miller states that the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative “additional recognized early on that various communities may choose to utilize richer semantic definitions” and that “a requirement evolved from this recognition” (Miller, 1999, Semantic Refinement, para. 1) – I think this could have been cut down more. Doing so would have allowed him to be more direct in explaining the Initiative’s reactions to users using semantic definitions outside the Dublin Core Element Set – maybe using the extra space to elaborate further. In addition, misspellings abound. To name a few, in the quote given above, he forgets to add “y” to “additional” to have “additionally;” under “DCMI Requirements,” he misspells “data model,” “representing,” and “required” in the same sentence – “…a formal datamodel able to support the requirements of the DCMI and a corresponding means of syntactic represetnating this information is requireed” (ibid., DCMI Requirements, para. 2); and under “Compound Values,” I believe he meant to use “whether” instead of “weather” in the last sentence [“These characteristics are independent of weather this person…”] (ibid., Compound Values, para. 1). The content is valuable, but such sloppy writing detracts its value. I do wonder, though, what the state of writing will become with digitization. Will it become better or worse or about the same? Is grammar linked to digitization? Will metadata have an effect on writing as well, adding new dimensions and structures to it?

 

Meloni, J. (2010, July 19). Using Mendeley for Research Management. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/using-mendeley-for-research-management/25627

            The article itself provides an interesting view on Mendeley. Being a Zotero user (presumably a rival company), J. Meloni (2010) investigates the management tool by applying for an account herself, experiencing Mendeley first-hand (Meloni, 2010, para. 2). Thus – although biased – she provides commentary only a user can, especially one who has tried other platforms.
            While Mendeley does seem like a viable management tool, I can see one major problem arising. When describing the key features of Mendeley, Meloni (2010) notes how a user can “view the most read authors, journals, and publications within [their] field or other fields” (ibid., Key Features, para. 1). While such discoveries ensure that a person can remain updated on the most popular readings and trends for a particular field, they also limit what one can read. The “most read” refers to what other users tend to read the most; their interests would not necessarily match every person’s interests. In this model, a user may have a harder time finding documents or authors who are not popular with the users but still provide key information on topics.
            Overall, though, I can see how Mendeley and Zotero can develop further. Meloni (2010) relates how she was able to use the “Import from Zotero” feature to seed her Mendeley account with her Zotero data, syncing the tools to improve her research capabilities (ibid., What About, para. 2). If a person can combine different modules together, they could create a new form of digital tools – fluid features which can combine and work together, increasing efficiency and the ability of the user to acquire whatever they need.