An Introduction to Metadata
Uppladdad av Wout Dillen
vyer
kommentarer
Relaterad media
Description
The aim for this video lecture was to give students a brief description of what metadata is, and why it is important, and also to specifically prepare students of the Multimodality course (MA in Information Science: Digital Environments) to meet the metadata related criteria for their project work assignments.
After a brief general introduction to the concept (that builds on and refers back to previous video lectures, linked below), students learn more about the difference between embedded metadata on the one hand, and external metadata on the other. At the same time, they receive practical illustrations on how they can get started describing digital objects in both these types of metadata. For embedded metadata, the lecture illustrates how metadata can be embedded into textual documents that are structured according to the TEI guidelines. For external metadata, the lecture gives an example of how students could describe digital objects in RDF/XML using the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative's metadata terms.
It should be noted that the methods demonstrated in this video lecture should not be regarded as 'best practices', to be followed for large scale archival projects. In an LIS context, describing documents in DCMI metadata terms can be useful, but there exist much more elaborate, relevant, and specific conceptional models for archival documents and metadata descriptions. A good example would be the Library Reference Model (LRM), developed by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA). An in-depth treatment of those models and methods lies, however, beyond the scope of this video lecture (and the course it is embedded in). What the video lecture means to do instead, is to 1) offer students a starting ground to develop their thinking about why and how to describe digital objects in metadata terms; and 2) give them a practical, simple example, that will allow them to meet the criteria for their project work assignments.
Additional Resources
This video lecture explicitly builds on and refers back to two other video lectures, recorded by Wout and his colleagues. These are:
Note: The slides to this video contained a number of errors. Some of these were spotted and corrected during the recording of this video, others were corrected afterwards. The latest version of the lecture's slides can be found here.
The aim for this video lecture was to give students a brief description of what metadata is, and why it is important, and also to specifically prepare students of the Multimodality course (MA in Information Science: Digital Environments) to meet the metadata related criteria for their project work assignments.
After a brief general introduction to the concept (that builds on and refers back to previous video lectures, linked below), students learn more about the difference between embedded metadata on the one hand, and external metadata on the other. At the same time, they receive practical illustrations on how they can get started describing digital objects in both these types of metadata. For embedded metadata, the lecture illustrates how metadata can be embedded into textual documents that are structured according to the TEI guidelines. For external metadata, the lecture gives an example of how students could describe digital objects in RDF/XML using the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative's metadata terms.
It should be noted that the methods demonstrated in this video lecture should not be regarded as 'best practices', to be followed for large scale archival projects. In an LIS context, describing documents in DCMI metadata terms can be useful, but there exist much more elaborate, relevant, and specific conceptional models for archival documents and metadata descriptions. A good example would be the Library Reference Model (LRM), developed by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA). An in-depth treatment of those models and methods lies, however, beyond the scope of this video lecture (and the course it is embedded in). What the video lecture means to do instead, is to 1) offer students a starting ground to develop their thinking about why and how to describe digital objects in metadata terms; and 2) give them a practical, simple example, that will allow them to meet the criteria for their project work assignments.
Additional Resources
This video lecture explicitly builds on and refers back to two other video lectures, recorded by Wout and his colleagues. These are:
- Linked Open Data for Digital Libraries (Wout Dillen)
- Embedded Image Metadata (Mikael Gunnarsson)
- Data Formats and Technological Foundations for the Web (Wout Dillen)
- XHTML and other XML-Based Markup Languages (Wout Dillen)
- Transcribing in TEI-XML with oXygen (Wout Dillen)
- TEI-XML Validation with Visual Studio Code (Wout Dillen)
- the FAIR data principles
- Mary Shelley's draft of Frankestein, held and digitised by the Bodleian Library
- Creative Commons licenses
- The guidelines of the Text Encoding Initiative
- Google Images
- Dublin Core Metadata Initiative metadata terms
- Expressing Simple Dublin Core in RDF/XML
- Expressing Qualified Dublin Core in RDF/XML
- Library of Congress Subject Headings
- A Command Line tutorial by Wout Dillen and Joshua Schäuble, that includes information about 'relative paths'
- W3C Schools information about HTML paths
Note: The slides to this video contained a number of errors. Some of these were spotted and corrected during the recording of this video, others were corrected afterwards. The latest version of the lecture's slides can be found here.
Credits and License
These slides were designed by Wout Dillen. This specific slideshow was developed as as training materials to accompany the spring 2024 edition of the ‘Multimodality: Narrative and Context in Different Media Formats’ course in the University of Borås’ International MA programme on ‘Digital Environments’ at the Swedish School for Library and Information Science. Wout currently works as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Borås.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License. All works of other authors cited, linked, and referred to here are their intellectual property and are used for academic purposes only.
- Taggar
-