Sunday, January 22, 2012

Week 3 Readings


As I read the Gilliland article as posted for the week 3 readings; the words look very familiar… it hits me; I’ve read this for the 2005 class. It is quite interesting to see the various forms of metadata can be in; it’s like stumbling across a market for the spices. The technical aspects of metadata are hard to get my brain to wrap around.  The article raises a point about usefulness of the metadata; “Good descriptive metadata is essential to users' ability to find and retrieve relevant metadata and information objects.” This might be the problem for the users who attempts to find something using library’s catalog. Good metadata would leave users satisfied with their findings, bad metadata leaves dissatisfied user/patron. In order to understand the technology, it is needed to know the mechanics behind it… at least the basic mechanics. Not understanding the role of the metadata is akin to driving a car and not knowing all the working parts. Dublin Core offers a picture as how it works with their program code. The idea behind the Dublin Core presents momentous challenge due to programming- the codes in different languages, working with large group of people on same goal. To develop codes for specific vocabulary is a dull affair, if one makes a mistake, one have to go through the coding to find it. As for using reference websites like Endnotes, it is really a choice for individual to use either ones. I once tried Refwork, it didn’t really work due to my preference doing sources on my own. This is good for long term research with multiple sources.

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