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Learning Metadata
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Learning Metadata
11:37 PM EDT 8/12/04
I have aspiraions of working as a cataloger when I finish my Master's Degree. I have taken all the courses offered in organization and classification at my school. However, I still don't feel like I know squat about metadata implementation from a librarian's point of view, and not for a lack of trying.

As a student, how do I learn this in my free time without the benefit of a work situation to help me along? Does anybody have experiences that they could share to shed some light on metadata, their standards and uses, and specifically how they are used in a library? Who is usually in charge of metadata implementation? How does metadata affect the user in public access computing?
Re: Learning Metadata
11:33 AM EDT 8/13/04 as a reply to Greg Argo.
Hello, Greg!

What a fascinating topic! I don't have any personal experience to share (still being in school myself) but I was intrigued enough that I did some quick searching through the journal databases. One interesting item that came up was:

Kim, K. Recent Work in Cataloging and Classification, 2000-2002 [Bibliographical essay]. Library Resources & Technical Services v. 47 no. 3 (July 2003) p. 96-108

It has a fairly substantial section: ELECTRONIC RESOURCES AND METADATA that you might find useful...

I didn't do an exhaustive search in the databases but I bet you could find a few more along these lines.

There seems to be some interesting things available online as well (I used Google and searched on:
"public libraries" metadata) and found these:


"Dublin Core Metadata in Cooperation with Public Libraries" from MMI-DC Meeting, Brussels 7th-8th March, 2002 By Jytte Hansen, The Danish Bibliographic Centre (http://www2.sub.uni-goettingen.de/cgi-bin/ssgfi/anzeige.pl?db=meta&nr=000619&ew=SSGFI)

"Canadian <Metadata> Forum Metadata in Public Libraries" (http://www.collectionscanada.ca/metaforum/n11-227-e.html)

I hope there are others out there reading this that have some personal/direct experience that they can share! emoticon
Re: Learning Metadata
3:44 PM EDT 8/30/04 as a reply to Greg Argo.
These are all good questions. I just completed my MLIS program and I also felt like I received only a very elementary exposure to metadata principles. My coursework included thesaurus construction, introductory XML schema, and implementation of digital collections, all of which relate to metadata. That just gave me a taste of the complexity of the topic.

I had the privilege of listening to a riveting (really!) 3-hour lecture on metadata from one of the gurus in the field, Stuart Sutton. He is a contributor to this article, <a href="http://www.dlib.org/dlib/april02/weibel/04weibel.html" target="_blank">Metadata Principles and Practicalities,</a> which gives a good overview of the subject.

For a slightly more user-friendly introduction to the subject, <a href="http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue5/metadata-masses/#html
" target="_blank">Metadata for the Masses</a> is a good place to start.

And here is the <a href="http://adam.ac.uk/adam/metadata.html" target="_blank">ADAM Quick Guide</a> to Metadata resources.

The application of metadata can be as simple as assigning the <a href="http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/" target="_blank">Dublin Core basic element</a> set to an HTML document in the header tags. To see examples, view the source code for each of these <a href="http://content.lib.washington.edu/sc.html" target="_blank">Digital Collections pages</a> from the University of Washington Special Collections online.

I am fascinated by this subject. I would love to hear from librarians who are putting metadata to work.