I kind of thought that "aggregating metadata" kind of meant enriching an
existing description (say, adding cover images, tables of contents,
links to the author's picture, etc. to a basic MARC record) using
external sources instead of adding more descriptions of more (different)
things.
This posed (to me) the additional problem of deciding what the best
source for the same kind of enrichment data comes from (say, you found
tables of contents in 3 places... which do you want?) as well as
converting each data to something *usable* =)
_alejandro
Eric Lease Morgan said the following on 16/02/2010 01:26 p.m.:
> Marja Haapalainen wrote:
>
>
>> ...We are currently looking at different ways of aggregating
>> metadata (mainly about e-articles, e-journals and e-books) from
>> different sources/publishers...
>>
>
> Till Kinstler wrote:
>
>
>> The whole data aggregation workflow really is a pain....
>>
>
> I think the idea of aggregating metadata is/was long time in coming. Kudos. And yes, one of the bigger challenges, besides the licensing/purchasing issues, will be the workflow and data normalization processes.
>
> On the other hand, the benefits can be huge. I see libraries as institutions who do collection, preservation, organization, and dissemination of data, information, and knowledge for specific audiences. By aggregating the metadata -- as opposed to licensing access to it -- libraries can fulfill their goals and provide useful services at the same time.
>
> Actually having possession of the data/metadata opens quite up a number of possibilities. The creation of a unified search interface is just one of them. No information silos. If the data/metadata is all in the same index, then relevancy ranking algorithms and statistical analysis will be much more valid. (Federated searching. Ick.) Once the data is housed locally, it can be more easily integrated into the wider community of the library. It is easier to seamlessly insert it into course management systems. It is easier to create current awareness services. It is easier to distribute. Once the data/metadata is housed locally, then it is easier to apply "digital humanities" computing techniques against it. Create concordances. Extract statistically significant n-grams (one, two, or n-length phrases). There are things called "champion lists" -- sets of words denoting a theme -- that can then be applied a corpus and used to calculate which items are more relevant. With direct acc!
> ess to the data/metadata it is easier to literally chart and graph texts thus illustrating similarities between them. Access to the full text allows you to find similar phrases or paragraphs between texts, and this leads to the ability to trace ideas and authors through time.
>
> Finding information is much less of a problem compared to ten or fifteen years ago. Everybody can find. What is needed now are tools that allow you to USE. This, I believe, is a big opportunity for the profession. Having the data/metadata makes such a thing much more possible.
>
>
--
_________________ ___ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
*Ing. Alejandro Garza González*
Coordinación de proyectos y desarrollo de sistemas
Centro Innov_at_TE, Centro para la Innovación en Tecnología y Educación
Tecnológico de Monterrey
Tel. +52 [81] 8358.2000, Ext. 6751
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Received on Fri Feb 19 2010 - 18:06:31 EST