Questions for 3-15

JISC Digital Media

Rating: 4

1) What is the risk with limiting your collection to one specific metadata schema? Is there a way to ensure that metadata that falls outside your schema is not lost? What benefits to having a schema are there and how do they outweigh the risks? Do they outweigh the risks?

2) How does they JISC definition of metadata compare to Gilliland’s definition? What differences and/or similarities are there? Could the differences arise because JISC is specifically speaking to “collections of sharable digital collections [of] still image, moving image or audio collections,” are they due to differences in author’s opinions or are they due to some other factor?

3) According to the website metadata can be kept in the digital file itself, in a database, in an XML document, or in all of the above. What are the benefits to keeping metadata in each of these locations? If each is beneficial doesn’t it make sense to use all 3 in every case? Why would some organizations choose to not do this?

Gilliland

Rating: 3

1) Metadata is currently a blend of manual and automatic processes. What would you estimate the ratio of manual to automated processes to be? How do you think this will this change as technology progresses? What are the risks in automating the collection and documentation of metadata and what benefits outweigh those risks? Regardless of what will happen, what should happen? Should we automate more processes or should we reintroduce a stronger human element?

2) How is metadata different today than it was 100 years ago? 10 years ago? Is the rate of change slow enough that we will be able to keep up with it?

3) Gilliland says that all information objects have 3 features: content, context, and structure. How do these features relate to the 5 attributes of metadata laid out later in the article? Does each attribute detail information about a single feature? Or do all the attributes exist separately for each feature? Should we look to accept either the 3 features or the 5 attributes or do they work together to paint a complete picture of the information object?

Nunberg

Rating: 5

1) Here again we see the need for a human element in computer processes. We saw it in the WordNet readings and the Church and Hanks readings from two weeks ago. We saw it in the data mining reading from the week before that. With the advances in technology we’ve experienced in our lifetime why do we still have this dependence on human input? Will computers ever be able to overcome the need for the human element? Should we be worried if this were to ever happen?

2) What kind of metadata is Nunberg talking about here? Are the things he mentions administrative? Descriptive? Technical? Something else? Is there a pattern here where some types of metadata are being bungled and others are not?

3) Why didn’t anyone tell the world that Sigmund Freud and his translator invented the internet back in 1939? Wouldn’t this have brought technology forward much more quickly? How would this have affected world history over the past 70 years?

Wiggins

Rating: 4

1) When they found that the information on the various schools’ websites were not up to date, did the authors attempt to contact the schools in question to get more reliable information? I mean, if they were already on the schools’ websites the phone number would probably have been right there. It just seems like a simple step that would have improved the results of the study. If they did not, could there be a good reason why they did not?

2) According to Table 2, UT Austin does not fit the stereotypical iSchool makeup of the members of the iSchool Caucus. We had much lower numbers of Computing faculty and we had the 3^rd highest percentage of both Humanities and Communication faculty. What does that say about the degree programs offered here in contrast with those offered at other schools? Why do you think UT has chosen to be different in the composition of its faculty? Was this a good choice?

3) Table 2 is not based off of the number of faculty from each field but the percentage of faculty. How does this affect the comparisons we draw between the schools? As an example, U Illinois has 20% of their faculty coming from the Humanities and UT has 18%. The actual numbers are that U Illinois has 6 faculty and we have 4. That is a 33% decrease represented by two percentage points. More drastic is UCLA under the same category. 10% of their faculty comes from the Humanities which turns out being 7 faculty. All of these numbers are correct, but it can be misleading because of the way they are presented. Is there a better way to organize this information?