Introduction to databases and metadata Outline What are databases? What are the elements of databases? What is metadata? Why are they important for digital projects?

2. Workshop outline
• What are databases?
• What are the elements of databases?
• What is metadata?
• Why are they important for digital projects?

3. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-
NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Rafia Mirza
Digital Humanities Librarian
rafia@uta.edu
@librarianrafia
Contact information

4. Why create a database?
• Databases:
• Sets of related data
that contain
information used to
organize a collection
of (digital ) items
• Used to organize
information in such a
way that it is easily:
• Accessed
• Managed
• Updated
• Via

5. Database standards
• Database standards
make sure info is
organized in such a
way that future users
can easily find info
they are looking for.
• ---------------------
• Looks pretty but only
useful if future user
cares about book color
and not book content
Photo by STML
https://flic.kr/p/2NwbJL

6. Relational Data
• Relational data is how you let the computer know that fields
in different worksheets/ tables are related
• Unique Elements allow the computer program you are using to
understand how to relate data from multiple tables in your
workbook to each other
• It allows merging of tables and disparate data sets
• So in certain projects you will have a workbook with multiple
worksheets
• Each worksheet will have an element (like an id number) that will
relate (be the same) to another worksheet in that workbook

7. Relational Data
• Here is an example of how unique elements in each table relate
to at least one other table
Image via Kenneth E. Foote and Donald J. Huebner, The Geographer's Craft Project, Department of Geography, The University of
Colorado at Boulder.

8. What is Metadata?
Video via Timelapse: What is Metadata? By tortoisebutler

9. What is Metadata?
• “Metadata was traditionally in the card catalogs of libraries. ..”
Image of Card Catalog - Reading Room via www.GlynLowe.com
Image of Card Catalog 2 via bookfinch

10. What is Metadata?
• “…As information
has become
increasingly digital,
metadata is also
used to describe
digital data using
metadata standards
specific to a
particular
discipline.” via wikipedia

11. Metadata in everyday life

12. Metadata in everyday life

13. What are Metadata Standards?

14. Example of standardization
rules
Image via Music Metadata Style Guide V. 2 by the Music Business Association’s Digital Supply Chain and Operations Workgroup

15. Example of a metadata standard:
Dublin Core
• Dublin Core is a metadata standard used by libraries and archives for
digital items that consists of 15 basic fields that can be used to describe
any digital object, no matter what it is

16. Example of a metadata standard:
ID3
• "ID3 is a de facto standard for metadata in MP3 files” via wikiepdia
• “ID3 tags provide the Title, Artist, Year, Genre and other great information when you're listening to
music….
• “An ID3 tag is a data container within an MP3 audio file stored in a prescribed format. This data commonly contains the Artist
name, Song title, Year and Genre of the current audio file.” via id3.org
Image via Wikipedia

17. Input Rules

18. Questions?
Image via Dom Dada