> So the response from some is now that we need to design the
> metadata for some particular new application, but we need to
> design the metadata to flexibly support many (any?)
> applications. Are we wrong to be thinking this? Is this a
> sisiphean task? Do we need to specify the bounds on what
> sorts of applications we mean to support better (the FRBR
> user tasks are one attempt to do this; are they sufficient?
> Why or why not?).
> Should we specify the bounds all the way down to something as
> specific as one particular application? (The 'online public
> access catalog'?
> Surely not!)
Sarah Shreeves of UIUC and I have been promoting recently the idea of
"shareable metadata" - that which is intelligible and useful in metadata
aggregations. We start from the notion that Carl Lagoze championed in
the early days of DC that all metadata is a *view* of a resource - that
it isn't possible to create a usage-neutral metadata record. Our
thinking here is that we don't have to design a view for every single
application, but that we can present a different view for every major
*class* of applications - a Google-style view, and OAIster/OAI-PMH style
view, a collection registry-style view, etc. I think we have a ways to
go before we fully understand what those fundamental views are and what
metadata they should contain, but it seems to me that a happy medium
between designing for every single application and designing for one
single application is the way we should be thinking about this.
Jenn
========================
Jenn Riley
Metadata Librarian
Digital Library Program
Indiana University - Bloomington
Wells Library W501
(812) 856-5759
www.dlib.indiana.edu
Inquiring Librarian blog: www.inquiringlibrarian.blogspot.com
Received on Tue May 22 2007 - 19:29:27 EDT