What’s in a name?

Image Source: NYPL Digital Gallery. The Pens at Ellis Island, registry room. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47da-d778-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

First off, let me just acknowledge that one of my previous posts, called “What’s in a File Name” was my own original creation. I had thought it a cute play on words, but then I noticed we have a reading entitled the same! So, I’ve decided it’s safer to use famous quotes and stop trying to be original! “What’s in a Name”, that famous little piece of Shakespeare prose, is what I kept asking myself recently as I processed an archival collection as part of my internship. I was typing out ID numbers and names for each person with a file in the collection. The people were/are farmers from the last 100 years. I would guess most of these people were born in the early 1900s, but it varies. I thought it would be fun to post a brief list of first names for a diversion from our readings. As you peruse this list of names, ask yourself what’s in a name. The question makes me think of data mining. What types of secondary uses might this metadata have? I can think of a few creative uses 🙂

Big fuss about Big metadata

The article on  Big Metadata by Allison Jai O’Dell   was a very fun read! I absolutely loved the slides. So happy to see one of my favorite Star Trek characters, Data!

I found myself wondering though, what the big fuss was about. After all, data mining has been around for a while and organizations have been hiring data miners and data managers for decades. Is #bigdata is just a current buzzword or does it really signify something new? And what about big metadata?

It is true that data are growing exponentially so that implies data are bigger than ever before and some data are doubling as I write this blog post. Lorna Dempsey offers some great examples of just how big data sets can get and will get  in her article, “Libraries and the informational future: Some notes.”

I appreciate the reminder O’Dell  gives us to be open to the multitudinous possibilities allowed by metadata, and inspiring us to think beyond “primary use.” In Archives class, we talked about secondary use all the time and how it was important to keep in mind as we describe archival collections and items therein, both the primary use and the secondary uses (known, inferred, and unknown) of particular materials.

Show me the API!

246 0 0 Alternative Title: What’s it take to be interoperable?

My quest to understand interoperability has led to 2 key acronyms:

XML and API.

XML seems to be very important because it’s a markup language that was created in order to make metadata more interoperable. Just remember X stand for eXtensible!

All I’ve figured out so far about APIs is that they might have something to do with interoperability 🙂

I found a pretty good description of how to work with one within the context of a specific application at the ArchivesSpace website- http://archivesspace.github.io/archivesspace/user/archivesspace-architecture-overview/

Is an API considered architectural metadata? If APIs contain instructions for certain functionality maybe they support interoperability between schemas or between different institutions. I think whether an institution’s digital objects are viewable in an aggregator like DPLA depends in part on API settings. I’m just spouting off the top of my head here. I would love to hear from anyone who knows how this works.

Metadata’s use in Archival Forensics

Michael Nelson  calls archival forensics “ingesting, making sense of and improving the preservability of a set of donated digital archives.”

I felt like I was engaged in a form of archival forensics the other day when I delved into the history of the student newspaper digitization project I mentioned in my previous post. By delving into the history, I mean the old digital files and backups. There wasn’t much documentation so I needed to glean what I could from the embedded metadata of the tiff files. They were not all named with the same convention, and files, folders, and folder hierarchies were scattered in multiple places on a hard drive and an external drive. This may sound like a nightmare, and while it was an organizational mess, I had fun playing detective with Metadata as my Watson. Just one example is that by looking at the date created and date modified attributes, I was able to determine when the original name convention stopped, which dove-tailed with the departure of the temporary archivist.

Metadata has many uses, seen and unforeseen! So, add lasting value to your digital objects; make it good 🙂

But in the case of embedded metadata or automatically generated metadata, we can only assess how well different software programs do this and make an informed decision.

What’s in a File Name

I am evaluating a digital student newspapers collection, a project started with the impetus of a grant and then was aborted for a while due to more pressing needs (like a large-scale migration to a shared ILS!). First off, let me just say this is why project documentation is so important. This kind of thing happens all the time in the dynamic world of today’s libraries and it’s ok! We just need to be a bit more prepared so we can be flexible with success:).

A file name for a digitized or digital object is an important piece of metadata. It is also sometimes known as the object’s unique identifier. A file name should contain certain things:

• A piece that connects it to the collection of which it is a part.
• A piece that identifies it as the unique object it is.
• File extension (indicating file format).
• A descriptive piece (This part isn’t essential but can be very helpful).

An example:  CLNP0001p1.tif

CLNP: Clark Newspaper Project

0001: Accession number assigned for each issue scanned

p1: page 1 of the issue

This is a pretty decent file naming convention. But something happened along the way, and the naming went awry. The accession number tells us only the order in which the issues were scanned, which isn’t necessary because the date data is embedded in the file. A clean up is needed and it will take a little extra effort to check what files actually are, especially for those that became separated from their parent folder(s). We are considering renaming the files to something like this:

CLNP_19680901p1 – This indicates page 1 of the September 01, 1968 issue of the CLNP. There is only 1 newspaper so this name connects the file to the collection, describes what it is, and identifies it uniquely of page 1 of that issue, of which there can be only one. This way a bit of descriptive metadata becomes part of the file name.

A file name is metadata no matter how it is structured or what it contains. But a well-named file can help keep digital collections organized. And there is another ramification. Say somebody sees a picture of their grandfather in a digitized issue and wants a high resolution copy. If that is a service the library wants to provide, it behooves us to create descriptive file names for back-end discoverability.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More about me

What brings me to this point in life where I am blogging about metadata? Why am I in this class, you wonder?  I will tell you a bit more about me and my background…..

I can’t really talk about myself without posting a picture of my cat. But I promise this will be the only picture of my cat in my blog. But if you like pictures of cats, check out #historicalcats

Pablo and L.D. Frogman

 

It is important that you know about Pablo because he pretty much dictates my life. It is nice that he is allowing me to be in this MLIS program:)

I have worked in libraries for a long time now- 12 plus years! What has gotten my mojo going the most is working with digital collections. I think I like it so much because there are so many aspects to it- IT, User Experience, Creative Partnerships, Project Management and Organizational skills, and Metadata!! And I think a bunch of other things I’m not thinking of at the moment. I am currently a Reference Librarian, which I really enjoy. I am doing an internship so I can stay abreast of the issues and trends in digital collection development and the broader array of library technical services. More on that later!

 

 

 

Standing under metadata

“Understanding Metadata” by NISO (2004) did a good job of explaining the various types of metadata and the predominant schemas. It was written in a very concise, easy-to-understand way. I appreciated the “metadata in action” sections for seeing how it all happens. Take home points for me were the following:

1.) The Dublin Core schema is descriptive metadata for minimalists, whereas MODS is a descriptive metadata schema for very detailed, granular description of objects. Also, MODS was developed specifically for describing digital objects. Both schemas have a solid place in the list of valuable schemas.

 

2.) Metadata is a collaborative effort! I mentioned this in a previous post and I have experienced this in the libraries I’ve worked in. It makes sense that different types of metadata are created by different people/entities. When developing a full metadata package complete with administrative, technical, preservation, descriptive, and structural metadata you will have much more accurate, professional metadata if pulled from the various experts. This will help ensure longevity of the digital object and its accessibility.

 

3.) The importance of being interoperable. At first, it is easy to criticize and ask “why so many different schemas and standards?” This section did a nice job of explaining that it is necessary to maintain several metadata standards in order to serve different communities. I wonder, are there distinct schemas for the field of medicine? I can see how describing objects related to medicine, such as surgical tools or procedures, might need something more than Dublin Core. I would like to understand how interoperability works, the mechanics of it. And I want to learn more about RDF. I remember reading about it in LS500 but somehow missed that it is designed to promote interoperability.

Let’s Collaborate!

Metadata is all about collaboration. It is and should be a collaborative effort. This is the sentiment I read whenever I read anything about metadata. I knew that and I’ve experienced that in my job, but for some reason, I envisioned the work I would do for this course as a solitary activity. I really like how the course is designed to simulate our real-world experience working with metadata as Information Professionals. By getting us on Twitter and blogs (if we haven’t been doing this already), it sets us up well for the types of interactions we can facilitate to enhance our work. Recently, the digital archivist in my library was trying to choose metadata schemas for a project, and when I inquired, I found that he was finding the most useful information via Twitter. It sounds like our indexing project for this class will be a collaborative effort- a good thing. And so fellow minions, I will see you on Twitter and on your blogs and on Facebook…..