1st reading
I believe this article shows the diversity of libraries. Unlike a hospital which every doctor carries a stethoscope, librarians do not hold the same equipment. A library chooses a database upon ones needs. The article illustrated the amount of databases available to a library. Libraries do not have one set way of doing things. They do things more by trial and error. The benefits of different systems are the database can uniquely fit the needs of a library. The downsides, however, is one librarian could not enter another library and know everything about the other's system.
2nd reading
Metadata is a very simple concept to understand, but hard to knowingly apply in real life. People use metadata all the time without realizing. It is harder to do something once you are thinking about it. Librarians, also, are trying to apply metadata on a world wide scale. It is easy to use metadata when only people close to you have to understand it. It is much harder when you have to consider billions of people. I believe this article is an excellent example. It defined metadata without any problems, but it had a hard time explaining how to knowingly apply it.
3rd reading
What does the American Library Association think about Dublin Core? It is an extremely interesting idea. However, it would take a lot of time and effort to implement. I have never heard of this database before. I wonder how much influence it has on American libraries.
In addition, I did not understand the computer coding in this article.
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I agree about your thoughts about metadata. Everyone uses it, but I imagine few people actually know that they are. Everyone labels, categorizes or files things all the time, and not even in a professional capacity. But since it’s our job to use metadata to help people find information easily, we have to understand they use metadata… even if they don’t know themselves!
ReplyDeleteAbout Dublin Core, I think it would be very interesting to know the ALA's views on it. I think that this sort of system is probably something that they would approve of, and want to have libraries implement. Perhaps if they don't now, or if they have a problem, they support it conditionally...
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