Jonathan,
I recently wrote an essay for a book (hope it gets published) on the
transition from cataloger to metadata librarian. And one of the reason I
give for why it's good for catalogers to learn how to program is that it's a
way to acquire the mindset, i.e., computational thinking, that's needed for
working with digital resources and metadata. You and Jeannette Wing are
cited in the essay.
I often struggle to put my finger on the difference between cataloging and
metadata creation, but it definitely requires a mental shift, a change in
the way we think about data.
Chris
On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 2:41 PM, Jonathan Rochkind <rochkind_at_jhu.edu> wrote:
> What some of us have talked about for a while is that what catalogers and
> metadata engineers need to know is NOT how to program, but something about
> what some people call "computational thinking" -- how to arrange a problem
> so it can be solved by software, how to recognize what sort of problems can
> be solved by software and what sorts are more difficult or impossible.
>
> But I have yet to find a good "curriculum" for that. It's taught in a good
> computer science program along with learning how to program, but it ought to
> be possible, Jeannette Wing and the other "comptuational thinking"
> enthusiasts think, to teach it apart from programming entirely too. But I
> don't know if there's a good curriculum available.
>
> Jonathan
>
>
> Eric Lease Morgan wrote:
>
>> On Apr 19, 2010, at 1:20 PM, Christine Schwartz wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> I agree with MJ that studying XML is a good place to start. Practically
>>> all
>>> the library metadata schemes use XML, so if you're going to transition
>>> into
>>> a cataloger/metadata librarian you need to know XML.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> I wrote an XML tutorial/workshop that may be of interest to the group.
>> From the introduction:
>>
>> XML is about distributing data and information
>> unambiguously. Through this hands-on workshop you will
>> learn: 1) what XML is, and 2) how it can be used to build
>> library collections and faciliate library services in our
>> globally networked environment.
>>
>> http://infomotions.com/musings/xml-in-libraries/
>>
>> The tutorial/workshop comes with a bevy of examples, scripts, stylesheets,
>> and sample data.
>>
>>
>>
>
Received on Mon Apr 19 2010 - 15:05:28 EDT