LIS457 - metadata for beginners - kaile glick

Metadata for beginnersBy Kaile [email protected]

LIS457

Dr. Cunningham

Metadata for beginners - Kaile Glick

mailto:[email protected]

Introduction

Teachers always told me that you can’t use the

word your trying to define in the definition.

For example, telling someone who has never

heard of basketball that a basketball is a “ball”

that goes in a “basket”, may not be very

helpful….


… so what is metadata?

Its data about data!


OK, lets try this again…

Metadata is a new word based on an old concept.

Any summary of the contents of a library or archive,

like a card catalog, contains metadata.

-Jeff Good

http://www.language-archives.org/documents/gentle-intro.html


For example:

A citation like the one below, is information

about a book--that is, data about data.


Asimov, I. The foundation trilogy: Three classics

of science fiction. Garden City, NY: Doubleday,

1963

http://www.language-archives.org/documents/gentle-

intro.html

…A book citation is a fairly well-known

kind of metadata, but the general idea of

``data about data'' is far more inclusive.

In fact

the general idea of metadata is SO inclusive

it can be nearly impossible to understand!


As with many newfangled technologies,

sometimes the easiest explanations come from

science fiction


The protagonist of Isaac Asimov’s

Foundation Trilogy is a mathematician

named Hari Seldon.

Several thousand years in the future,

seldon develops a branch of

mathematics known as

“Psychohistory”…


Using massive data sets collected and

computed by the galactic empire,

Seldon discovers that he can predict

the future (and maybe save the

universe) by observing statistical

patterns and probabilities on a galactic

scale. On a small scale his system is

error-prone however, he observes that

a mass of people is predictable if the

quantity of this mass is very large …

The larger the number, the more

predictable is the future.Metadata for beginners - Kaile Glick

In the fictional future that Hari Seldon inhabits the

internet has not been invented (Asimov published

the first installment of the story in 1951). How the

data was collected in the first place is never

mentioned, but the Psychohistorians in the book

spend a lot of time pouring over books and jotting

down calculations while trying to avert the crumbling

of the empire.


Ironically….

These days we have the

internet….


Instead of a bunch of old guys doing a

hundred years worth of algebra ….

All it takes is a fast computer


…Which brings us back to

metadata…• Like psychohistory, metadata collection and

analysis makes it much easier to make

predictions about all sorts of things - from human

behavior to the spread of diseases - than ever

before

• “When we interact over our modern

communications infrastructure, we send data

about the communication that allows it to

successfully reach its intended recipient.

Traditionally this is what was called

communications metadata.”

-The Student Coalition for

Privacy


Thank you for watching my power

point!

Any Questions?


Education

LIS457 - metadata for beginners - kaile glick