Monday Morning Blog

Strings versus things – this is a common debate/discussion in cataloging circles lately.   The idea that a string of text which represents or describes something is more difficult to construct and less versatile relative to an assigned code which can be mapped to represent the “thing” is not a new idea. The reality is that there is a long tradition of “string creation” in the realm of library metadata.   The science of creating metadata for libraries had its origin in a time before the invention of electronic computers.   The earliest metadata was recorded by human beings on paper or in a paper-based location; coded using human language; and read and interpreted directly by the human eye.   Humans read and can readily make sense of words and sentences.   Words and sentences are made up of strings of text.   In order to make sense of the strings of text, they are typically organized in a certain way (e.g. ISBD).    When the MARC standard was de...

Way back in Metadata Update #13 (Feb 14 2013 http://donnaefrederick.blogspot.ca/2013/02/metadata-update-13-identifiers.html ), I spoke briefly about the role and importance of identifiers in online electronic information.   Three years later, it has proven that the talk about identifiers wasn’t a splash in the pan. They were the talk of the town at ALA Midwinter once again.   As libraries experimented with BIBFRAME and moved from BF 1.0 to BF 2.0 and linked data work moved from the theoretical LD4L to the practical LD4P, certain things about library data and the wider information environment, things that we have “sort of known” for a long time, have gradually started to come into much clearer focus and we are starting to understand what they really mean for the day to day work of creating and managing metadata.   One of those “things” is the importance of identifiers. Libraries have long made use of the concept of controlled vocabularies where a single word, phras...

It's been a little over a month since I was at ALA Midwinter in Boston and I've been thinking about the key messages that I came away with this year.  I don't think that there is any question that there was a lot of talk about "strings v things" and the increasing importance of "identities".  However, what were the bigger messages?  I did have to take my time and think through the issues and discussions!  There was a lot to consider.  In the end, this is what I concluded: 1)  Libraries have talked about modernizing their metadata, replacing MARC and entering the global information environment for a very long time.  Now we are actually doing it.  It is real, things are happening.  You don't even have to look too long to find evidence of it - if you know what you know where and how to look. 2)  Libraries have used the same models and concepts for a very long time and have massive amounts of metadata which reflect the traditional wa...