Does metadata matter?

Slide 1: July 2008 Does metadata matter? Andy Powell, Eduserv Foundation andy.powell@eduserv.org.uk www.eduserv.org.uk/foundation

Slide 2: or… should we be interested in metadata and, if so, why? Does metadata matter? July 2008 2

Slide 3: I’m going to try to deliver 130 slides in 30 minutes Does metadata matter? July 2008 3

Slide 4: then you can ask questions (yes… I really did say “130 slides”) Does metadata matter? July 2008 4

Slide 5: non-technical Does metadata matter? July 2008 5

Slide 6: metadata jargon Does metadata matter? July 2008 6

Slide 7: first, some history… Does metadata matter? July 2008 7

Slide 8: Does metadata matter? July 2008 8

Slide 10: metadata is… Does metadata matter? July 2008 10

Slide 11: machine-readable Does metadata matter? July 2008 11

Slide 12: descriptive Does metadata matter? July 2008 12

Slide 13: for the purposes of… Does metadata matter? July 2008 13

Slide 14: resource discovery Does metadata matter? July 2008 14

Slide 15: resource management Does metadata matter? July 2008 15

Slide 16: delivery / access control Does metadata matter? July 2008 16

Slide 17: use / re-use Does metadata matter? July 2008 17

Slide 18: long term preservation Does metadata matter? July 2008 18

Slide 20: MARC - Machine-Readable Catalogue Does metadata matter? July 2008 20

Slide 23: still the predominant metadata standard (in the library world) Does metadata matter? July 2008 23

Slide 25: a distributed search standard called… Z39.50 so that multiple library catalogues can be searched from one place Does metadata matter? July 2008 25

Slide 26: AACR2 currently being replaced by… RDA (more generic – i.e. not just books!) Does metadata matter? July 2008 26

Slide 27: Z39.50 supplemented by SRW and SRU (Web-friendly variants) Does metadata matter? July 2008 27

Slide 28: FRBR Does metadata matter? July 2008 28

Slide 29: none of which needs bother you… Does metadata matter? July 2008 29

Slide 30: other than to note that… Does metadata matter? July 2008 30

Slide 31: metadata tends to get more complicated the longer you think about it Does metadata matter? July 2008 31

Slide 32: 1994 Does metadata matter? July 2008 32

Slide 35: a few 10s of 1000s of pages Does metadata matter? July 2008 35

Slide 36: but recognised that finding stuff was going to start getting difficult Does metadata matter? July 2008 36

Slide 37: people (mainly librarians) began trying to catalogue it by hand Does metadata matter? July 2008 37

Slide 40: http://www.intute.ac.uk/ Does metadata matter? July 2008 40

Slide 41: meanwhile… Does metadata matter? July 2008 41

Slide 42: AltaVista (first major Web search engine – circa 1995) Does metadata matter? July 2008 42

Slide 43: people began to realise that the metadata they embedded into Web pages might be important Does metadata matter? July 2008 43

Slide 44: hang on… did I just say “metadata embedded into Web pages”? Does metadata matter? July 2008 44

Slide 45: <html> <head> <title>A web page</title> </head> <body> … </body> </html> Does metadata matter? July 2008 45

Slide 46: <html> <head> <title>A web page</title> <meta name=“keywords” content=“some, key, words” /> <meta name=“description” content=“a summary” /> </head> <body> … Does metadata matter? July 2008 46

Slide 47: birth of the SEO industry Does metadata matter? July 2008 47

Slide 48: then came Google Does metadata matter? July 2008 48

Slide 49: and the rest, as they say, is history Does metadata matter? July 2008 49

Slide 50: Google takes note of links between pages Google PageRank Does metadata matter? July 2008 50

Slide 51: but places less emphasis on embedded metadata Does metadata matter? July 2008 51

Slide 52: metaspam <meta name=“keywords” content=“coca cola” /> Does metadata matter? July 2008 52

Slide 53: metacrap <title>put your title here</title> Does metadata matter? July 2008 53

Slide 54: despite that, work continued on embedded metadata most notably in the form of… Does metadata matter? July 2008 54

Slide 55: Dublin Core (circa 1995) Does metadata matter? July 2008 55

Slide 56: initially 15 metadata elements a.k.a properties a.k.a. attribute/value pairs Does metadata matter? July 2008 56

Slide 57: contributor coverage creator date description format identifier language publisher relation rights source subject title type Does metadata matter? July 2008 57

Slide 58: embedded into Web pages Does metadata matter? July 2008 58

Slide 59: or encoded using XML Does metadata matter? July 2008 59

Slide 60: intention was to improve indexing by search engines Does metadata matter? July 2008 60

Slide 61: but people forgot about… Does metadata matter? July 2008 61

Slide 62: “metaspam” and “metacrap” Does metadata matter? July 2008 62

Slide 63: the search engines didn’t! Does metadata matter? July 2008 63

Slide 64: and so, by and large, search engines still ignore embedded metadata Does metadata matter? July 2008 64

Slide 65: despite that, there has been fairly widespread adoption in policy terms Does metadata matter? July 2008 65

Slide 66: particularly in e-Government (e.g. UK eGMS) Does metadata matter? July 2008 66

Slide 67: but also in other areas – education, health, environmental agencies, libraries, cultural heritage sector, … Does metadata matter? July 2008 67

Slide 68: growth of rules around metadata content (i.e. cataloguing rules) (everyone’s rules are different) Does metadata matter? July 2008 68

Slide 69: and growth in use of additional elements for particular communities (and everyone’s additions are different) Does metadata matter? July 2008 69

Slide 70: such usage documented in the form of “application profiles” Does metadata matter? July 2008 70

Slide 71: Dublin Core Metadata Initiative coordinating “standards” body (note again: growing complexity over time) Does metadata matter? July 2008 71

Slide 73: the W3C developed the Resource Description Framework (RDF) (circa 1999) Does metadata matter? July 2008 73

Slide 74: the standard for the “Semantic Web” Does metadata matter? July 2008 74

Slide 75: Tim Berners-Lee’s vision for a machine-readable Web of data Does metadata matter? July 2008 75

Slide 76: allowing software to navigate and reason about Web content automatically Does metadata matter? July 2008 76

Slide 77: a Web of “Linked Data” Does metadata matter? July 2008 77

Slide 78: RDF, RDFS, OWL, FOAF, … (but also Microformats, RSS, …) Does metadata matter? July 2008 78

Slide 80: elearning community was busy developing its own standards Does metadata matter? July 2008 80

Slide 81: IEEE LOM (Learning Object Metadata) Does metadata matter? July 2008 81

Slide 82: same as DC …but different! (different elements, different syntax) Does metadata matter? July 2008 82

Slide 83: <cough /> Does metadata matter? July 2008 83

Slide 84: a brief aside Does metadata matter? July 2008 84

Slide 85: identifiers are important Does metadata matter? July 2008 85

Slide 86: URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) is the identifier system of the Web Does metadata matter? July 2008 86

Slide 87: but some issues… e.g. around persistence Does metadata matter? July 2008 87

Slide 88: to cut a long story short Does metadata matter? July 2008 88

Slide 89: it turns out that ‘http’ URIs (a.k.a. URLs) are the worst kind of Web identifier… Does metadata matter? July 2008 89

Slide 90: …apart from all the others Does metadata matter? July 2008 90

Slide 91: (not everyone agrees with that!) Does metadata matter? July 2008 91

Slide 92: <breath /> Does metadata matter? July 2008 92

Slide 93: repositories Does metadata matter? July 2008 93

Slide 96: but arXiv was not the only repository Does metadata matter? July 2008 96

Slide 97: recognised need for aggregating metadata from different repositories into a single place so that it could be searched Does metadata matter? July 2008 97

Slide 98: OAI-PMH (a protocol for metadata harvesting) Does metadata matter? July 2008 98

Slide 99: harvesting metadata into repository search engines of which OAIster is best known (but it isn’t really used much) Does metadata matter? July 2008 99

Slide 100: and the major search engines like Google don’t support the OAI-PMH Does metadata matter? July 2008 100

Slide 101: because it isn’t mainstream enough (and because of “metaspam” and “metacrap”) Does metadata matter? July 2008 101

Slide 102: and so to 2008… Does metadata matter? July 2008 102

Slide 103: political agenda around institutional repositories Does metadata matter? July 2008 103

Slide 104: in order to store, manage and disclose… Does metadata matter? July 2008 104

Slide 105: institutional assets research papers learning objects research data Does metadata matter? July 2008 105

Slide 106: exposing metadata about these things using the OAI-PMH to search services Does metadata matter? July 2008 106

Slide 107: which services? err… OAIster :-( Does metadata matter? July 2008 107

Slide 108: what kind of metadata? typically DC Does metadata matter? July 2008 108

Slide 109: or a variant of DC because simple DC is really too simple to be very useful Does metadata matter? July 2008 109

Slide 110: but unfortunately… Does metadata matter? July 2008 110

Slide 111: …DC variants tend to be more complex and therefore metadata can’t be created very easily by ordinary researchers Does metadata matter? July 2008 111

Slide 112: but that’s another story! Does metadata matter? July 2008 112

Slide 113: ok… Does metadata matter? July 2008 113

Slide 114: why are we interested? Does metadata matter? July 2008 114

Slide 115: are we interested? Does metadata matter? July 2008 115

Slide 116: metadata is everywhere Does metadata matter? July 2008 116

Slide 123: metadata in sites like the Science Museum is mostly locked away within the site Does metadata matter? July 2008 123

Slide 124: can expect growing pressure to expose it on the Web for others to “mash up” Does metadata matter? July 2008 124

Slide 125: in HE, we are operating in an “institutional repository” political environment Does metadata matter? July 2008 125

Slide 126: we (should?) have an interest in repositories of research publications and research data particularly research data Does metadata matter? July 2008 126

Slide 127: metadata comes to the fore in scenarios where content is non-textual (e.g. data) and where required information can’t easily be derived from textual content (e.g. author name) Does metadata matter? July 2008 127

Slide 128: thank you Does metadata matter? July 2008 128

Slide 129: OK I lied… …it was 128 slides Does metadata matter? July 2008 129

Slide 130: unless you count these last two Does metadata matter? July 2008 130

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