Here are your weekly five things:
Are you interested in a ton of useful and current information related to photo metadata? Well, this link to notes and presentations from the Photo Metadata Conference 2012 at CEPIC will keep you quite amused for days on end. With sessions moderated by David Riecks on the topics of search - finding the image, finding the rights, and the future of search and image licensing, there are presentations here from industry leaders.
Mary Forster, Director Search Strategy at Getty Images, presented on open linked data and its potential within the picture library industry. Thinking of open linked data like six degrees of Kevin Bacon, the information here demonstrates through tangible examples how machine readability, unambiguous entries, dynamic, frequently updated collective intelligence can lead to greater findability and inform browse.
Andrew LaBonte, Director Search Metadata at Corbis presented on the future of search. From open source search engines to crowdsourcing, this presentation delves deeply into one of my favorite subjects - can keywording be crowdsourced? Differentiating between simple and complex tasks seems the key to the proper utilization of crowdsourced knowledge, because "people like to tag images."
Mr. LaBonte also explores Algorithm “Magic” vs. Metadata “Reality." Here is a formula for the future:
The Future = (constant algorithm refinement and innovation)
+
(increased metadata consistency and standardization)
The section on click metrics compares keywording relevance to customer relevance - subjectivity in image description. With a lovely example showing that one person's cute baby may not be another person's cute baby, click metrics may eventually be the way to effectively harness and target search results on a more personal level.
These were not the only presentations featured, but I have been fortunate to intern in Mary's group at Getty and to see Mr. LaBonte in the hallways at Corbis. I hope someday to attend CEPIC and perhaps even present on similar topics. For now, I will soak up all the information here and you can enjoy it as well.
Here are five things:
Do you know what a "catablog" is? I didn't (or at least I didn't realize that I did) until I read this awesome post on the OCLC hangingtogether.org blog. A “catablog” can create searchable, browseable online presentations of collections, essentially a low budget collection management method.
I think blogs that promote certain key collections, like my favorites at the University of Washington or Duke University, can be considered catablogs. A blog can also organize a group of digital collections like ArchiveGrid.
In any event, you can and should read this whole post which not only points to an interesting report calledThe Metadata IS the Interface, but contains this quote which sums it all up for me:
"Archivists and librarians contribute to discovery when they discard illusions of neutrality and express their excitement for the materials and their opinions about their significance."
I write this blog because I like to share my excitement over a variety of metadata, digital, and library topics. If it drives traffic to some unexpected places, I've done my job. So, in an effort to economically market any valuable digital resource like a special collection, why not blog?
Here are five more things:
The Henry Stewart Events Digital Asset Management conference in New York happened on May 10 and 11th. As always, the topics looked saliant with a lot of focus on my favorite topics - metadata and creative workflow as related to DAM. Here is a sysnopsis of the best Tweets from the two day event #DAMNY:
Here are five more things and then some:
BONUS: check out The Signal, the LOC digital preservation publication.
Here is a simple guide to maximizing metadata when self publishing online. Joel Friedlander, veteran writer/book designer/publishing acumen presents a concise overview of e-book metadata and then delves into how to use keywords with particular metadata fields to create a "secret sauce" that becomes the search-related verbal key to your book's discoverability online.
Taking it one step further, an author might perform some similar searches on similar items to amass relevant keyword ideas and then edit and customized based on their particular work. Another powerful point that Joel makes is that you can always go back to refine the keywords over time to better sell your content.
Here are five marvelous things: