Minotaur: Gordon Dunsire, Metadata: to be, or not to be (catalogued)

Gordon Dunsire, Tel: 0131 455 3427     g.dunsire@napier.ac.uk     (Head of Information Strategy and IT Development, Napier University)

Ariadne 1997
(ReLIS:doi:doiari:y:1997:i:10:p:31)

Abstract:

Metadata: it's one of those words that rolls off the tongue; I expect Tony Hancock of h-h-h-half hour fame, could have had some fun with it, as in (I think) the Blood donor, where the 'drinka pinta milka day' slogan catches his eye - eatametadataday, anyone? What I want to rant about in this column is something close, yet 'further away' - metametadata. If metadata is 'data about data', then metametadata is 'data about metadata'. While the Webblies have at last cottoned on to the need for some kind of structured approach to information retrieval, and there is much gnashing of teeth about Dublin cores and the like, the emphasis remains on structure, rather than content. In other words, it's all very nice to know that most, if not all, Web objects ought to indicate who the 'author' is, and what subjects are covered, etc., but where are the guidelines on how to formulate the content of this metadata? Is it OK to enter 'Gordon Dunsire' as the author of this object, or should it be 'G Dunsire', or come to that, 'Dunsire, Gordon', etc.? And what happens if I use a pseudonym, not to conceal but to categorise various types of output? Will the form I choose make a difference to the reader's ability to search for all the stuff on the Web that's written by me? Or about me? Do search-engines know that 'G Dunsire' and 'Dunsire, Gordon' are the same thing? And that 'George Dunsire' isn't? What happens if my name is 'John Smith'?

Note: Gordon Dunsire thinks that all is not rosy in the garden that is metadata, and wonders how it can assist cataloguing in a real-world sense. This article appears identically in both the Web and print versions of Ariadne.
Month: Tuesday July 15th, 1997
Year: 1997

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