Metadata Monday: Metadata Standards for Cinematic Works

In honor of the Academy Awards, here is a fantastic metadata standard for cinematic works - EN 15907. Available in English, French and German this standard employs some of the usual suspects for elements like Identifier, Title and Year of Reference, but also includes film specific elements like Award. Dare to dream!

This standard is simple, elegant and extensible. The filmstandards.org web page also features interesting related documentation and resources compiled by the film archives community and from people working in related cultural heritage institutions, organizations, and initiatives.

5 Things Thursday: Seattle Camera Club, Hasbro, Librarian Looks

Here are five more things to amaze and delight.

1. Watch this cool video from the University of Washington on the Seattle Camera Club.
2. Find out if nobody cares about the library.
3. Show the world what a librarian looks like!
4. Learn more about Hasbro's investment in DAM.
5. How is publishing employing rNews – a new standard for embedding machine-readable publishing metadata into HTML documents?

Metadata Monday: Metadata and the Irrelevance of "Cultural Gatekeepers"

Simon Hopkins posted an interesting article on the Open Innovation Metadata site essentially about humans versus algorithms to aid in the selection of music and other cultural cache.

Back in the pre-digital age, people often relied on published reviews and art or music critics to help guide their listening or viewing consumption. Enter Amazon, and suddely in addition to user recommendations there is a great deal of data - manipulated and filtered via algorithm - to aid in selection and ensure a pleasing fit.

While sites like Amazon and Netflix certainly can hit far off the mark occassionally displaying recommendations for BBQ cookbooks for diehard vegetarians, the math employed to tabulate user preferences is solid and without the ego of a cool-seeking music critic.

It all comes down to the metadata.

 

5 Things Thursday: IDimager, Penguin, Postcards and DAM Dashboards

Come and get your five things!

1. Want to test a beta photo program? Check out IDimager.
2. Why did Penguin unfriend libraries?
3. Look at these postcards from the dawn of photography.
4. Interested in hand-colored photos of the NW from the 1920's?
5. Do you use a DAM dashboard?

Happy Valentine's Day: Creepy Cupid from NYPL Digital Collection

Metadata Monday: The Controlled Vocabulary

I just read a really good blog post about how and why to employ a controlled vocabulary and thesaurus for e-commerce or web applications. Looking for Metadata in all the Wrong Places discusses everything from the basic definition of a controlled vocabulary (CV) - "a CV is simply a pre-determined list of standard terms used to describe a particular subject domain" - to some great resources.

Ultimately, the best method of creating a vocabulary for a specific domain might be to borrow and adapt an existing thesaurus or to grow a CV over time. This blog post talks about these methods, explores pros and cons and finally touches upon three important considerations:

• Users - Who will use it?
• Content - What will it be used to describe?
• Context - Where and how will it be used?

This is an article worth reviewing if you are in the planning stages of a CV project.

Happy Lincoln's Birthday

From The Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection.

5 Things Thursday: Internet Archive, Wikipedia, Archives of American Art

Here are five amazing things:

1. Check out the Internet Archive's live music collection.
2. Is Wikipedia really the library's competition?
3. Read about a visit to the digitization program for the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.
4. How to keep taxonomy requirements simple.
5. Learn about metadata provenance.

Metadata Monday: A Book About Tagging

I ran across an interesting book on Amazon recently - Tagging: People-powered Metadata for the Social Web by Gene Smith. Written in the dark ages of social media, 2008, this book still offers a relevant and insightful look into the power of people for tagging the internet universe.

Touting tags as a springboard to new ideas, Smith explores tagging for classification, visualization and exploration. As one might expect, taxonomies and folksonomies are discussed as well as real world examples from Flickr and Amazon.

As more and more metadata is generated collectively, it is worth revisiting this resource.

 

5 Things Thursday: Online Courses, Trial and Error and Posterous

Here are 5 more fascinating things to ponder:

1. Should online coursework be an MLIS requirement? (Yes!)
2. Should you really just try it and see what happens as an M.O.?
3. Do you have a sinking feeling about a new collection of Titanic images?
4. Read a well deserved love letter to The Seattle Public Library.
5. Sneak peek into the Real Story Group's 2012 DAM and MAM Market Overview.

BONUS: Why did Posterous just spontaneously change my blog design? No, really...