it’s all meta

well, maybe not, but still…

panel ripped from “Slowpoke” by Jen Sorensen (www.slowpokecomic.com)

from the W3C Semantic Web Activity homepage

www.w3c.org/2001/sw:“The Semantic Web is about two things. It is about common formats for interchange of data, where on the original Web we only had interchange of documents. Also it is about language for recording how the data relates to real world objects."

we all know good metadata is important,

right?• Metadata enables searchability and retrieval

• Metadata increases functionality• Metadata facilitates interoperability

example:

MP3+ ID3

so why is it an issue?

A multitude of fields, each with different ideas of how to represent knowledge/info, trying to work with each other in the same information spaceA plethora of information formats, each with different metadata requirements And a whole bunch of wildly different frameworks and schemas

what about Dublin Core?

A good start:• A simple structure• Widely recognized• Schema available for XML and RDF

But…• Minimal functionality• Mainly useful for web-based text documents

who else is in the game?

Nearly everybody. To name a few:ISOLibrary of Congress: MARC21, MODS (Metadata Object Description Schema), METS (Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard)Adobe XMP

the problem of non-text media

questions