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Showing posts from 2015

Metadata Update #26: The lost post

I intended to post this quite a while back but was distracted from the task.  By the way, you might gather that this post was written for a blog besides this one.  It is true that it was but it was rejected.  However, I think that my readers would still find it interesting.  So, here it goes: What I am writing today is not what I first imagined reflects a real-life challenge faced by many of our colleagues across the globe.   This challenge isn’t a new discovery by any means but perhaps what my post can bring to the understanding is a different context and perspective.   It is the challenge of finding a place to begin to research when a person feels surrounded by external and internal pressures for productivity; overwhelmed by change; confused by conflicting information and priorities; concerned about a lack of experience with doing research; and unnerved at the thought of having your first attempts at publishing research scrutinized.   What I will share with the readers of this bl

Update: Metadata Management Book

A couple of weeks ago I finished writing a book on the topic of eBook metadata management in academic libraries.  I am eagerly awaiting the complete acceptance of the first draft but, alas, I am still awaiting permissions from some of the rights holders of content which I would like to reuse in my book.  I am getting very eager about getting this book completely finished!  It's been quite the process.

Metadata Update #24 : Metadata as part of the user experience

Sometimes I find a blog post that puts into words the sorts of things that I have been trying to find a way to state for myself.  Erin Leach has written a blog post called "On metadata and user experience " which gets to the heart of many things that I have been thinking about lately: http://unifiedlibraryscene.blogspot.ca/2015/03/on-metadata-and-user-experience.html Sometimes in libraries we worry about what our discovery interfaces look like, the sorts of experiences our patrons have using them and whether the colours are attractive or not but forget about the metadata and the metadata quality which are often critical in determining whether or not patrons can find resources in the collection. I certainly have heard librarians, who work outside of cataloguing and metadata, say that they think that the new discovery layers can somehow magically "fix" problems with metadata.  There seems to be a belief that technology magically repairs records and

Metadata Update #23 - Library 2.014 - The blog post that didn't make the cut

So, here is a blog post which I wrote for another blog but apparently it didn't quite match what was wanted.  I thought that I may as well share it here.  Based on the feedback I've got on some of the other writing I've done on this topic, I thought that some of my regular readers would enjoy reading the post here: When I was first asked to write a blog post for ****, I had what I thought was a great plan in my mind.   What I am writing today is not what I first imagined but, instead, reflects a real-life challenge faced by many of our colleagues across the globe.   This challenge isn’t a new discovery by any means but perhaps what my post can bring to the understanding is a different context and perspective.   It is the challenge of finding a place to begin to research when a person feels surrounded by external and internal pressures for productivity; overwhelmed by change; confused by conflicting information and priorities; concerned about a lack of experience with