>I think there is a lot of growth opportunity, but libraries have to get
>the underlying data structures and standards right and then make them
>available not only for their own internal purposes but for the larger
>public good. I suppose if that were to happen a whole growth industry
>could spring up, much like LibraryThing relies on MARC record
>information (in addition to Amazon records, or mashups of both sources).
>I don't think libraries should do it all-- companies like Syndetics and
>Serial Solutions can do things in a more rational way, but I think that
>the original mission and purpose of libraries should lead to a set of
>standards that can form the basis for both library-centered free
>information access and for a "new economy" model of information services
>to be used by all of society.
I don't think you are suggesting this, but I think it is dangerous to put
everything on hold, and not to encourage other approaches, while we get
the underlying data structures and standards "right", even assuming we
could agree on what "right" is. There is no guarentee that what we
consider the most appropriate data structures and standards would spur a
growth industry. I also wonder if it is wrong minded to divorce the
availability of the data structures from the availability of the objects
they seek to serve. There's been a lot of work done on full text indexing
in particular, and using LSI and other techniques to draw out underlying
patterns from critical masses of content. Plus, even the most perfect data
structure can be undermined by the systems that work with it, if the most
effective form of metadata was targeted, it would probably involve
discussion of ways of indicating preferred tokenizers and stemmers in
addition to the semantics of "entities" and "resources" and so on.
I agree that the role of metadata in the discovery layer is definitely
important, but I really wonder if a blended model of existing metadata,
outside data, usage patterns, multiple services, and mass digitization is
a better use of library priorities than seeking the holy grail of data
structures. On the other hand, if the quest is deemed the priority, and
maybe it is, it would be worth doing some research on how the technology
could best leverage such efforts, or could dovetail with their intent. I
am no expert at what other communities have done with metadata, but my
sense is that in areas like real estate and pharmaceutical metadata,
pragmatism has usually won out over every other approach, and these are
communities that probably have been able to do a fair amount of homework.
At the very least, I would like to see some more evidence in all this that
the part of the information retrieval process controlled by metadata can't
somehow be compensated, even to a small degree, by other parts of the
ecosystem that the web represents.
art
Received on Fri May 18 2007 - 11:21:44 EDT