Tag Archives: metadata

Metadata wrap-up, and reading/blogging for Wednesday, March 11

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Today we discussed metadata in many forms and structures: hierarchical taxonomies, user-generated folksonomies, subject-specific thesaurii such as MeSH, and the revealing patterns created by analyzing our personal metadata, such as that generated by emails. On Wednesday, March 11 we’ll discuss the mechanics of searching, including how search engines work. We’ll also address databases: what they are and what’s in them.

For Wednesday, please read the following:

Badke Ch. 3, “Database Searching with Keywords and Hierarchies”
Liddy, How a Search Engine Works
Your blogging assignment is one reading response blog post.

~Prof. L.

Graphs by MIT, reading response.

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“To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven; the same key opens the gates of hell.” That was a quote given from the video in the article, “Graphs by MIT Students Show The Enormously Intrusive Nature of Metadata.” I already knew of this knowledge, but the information they shared was fascinating. I believe the quote they used at the end of the students video was valid because with access to that much of someone’s personal metadata, I’m sure that can cause many people to feel uneasy. The question that comes to mind is, where is this metadata going to take us in the future?

metadata

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Basically, metadata is information about information, something that build and refresh by people all the time, it’s like side effect of online living, all movements has consciences. Is it personal information? Yes. Is it possible to use it? Of course. Idea is, that how to live with this depend only from personal user opinion. If, for example, person doesn’t do anything wrong, not involved in any elicit activity and not feels like a person of government interest, for that citizen is not important if somebody can  collect his metadata and research it. It’s about seven billion people on planet Earth, more than half get internet access. How many people from this number are so important for somebody to be traceable? I think less than one percent. And still if anybody feels like big brother is watching on him, there are two very simple rules in terms of using internet and living pieces of personal information- moderation and discipline.

From the other side, what is better to use during the research : hashtags ,keywords or control vocabulary depends only from circumstances and topic, they all are different tools and represent different technique, and as Badke mentioned, is good to use them all.

 

Metadata:William Maldonado

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Metadata is a very resourceful tool and can become even more resourceful If it could be read properly. The Immersion program made by Deepak and Daniel is a great example of showing this because it takes all the metadata and builds a understandable interface which it makes it easier to read. I like immersion for most of the statements they made they made but its also scary because big companies have the money to have a software such as immersion built to see their users data and habits, through doing such thing they can personalize advertisement according to the users metadata information. Although it is nice to see things advertised that we might actually like, I feel like letting companies have such information be at their finger tips without our consent is violating our rights and if letting them use this information increases their profit the least they can do is pay their users for using their metadata maybe then it might be a ok. Now in the folksonomy article I agree with Jessica Dye when she states thats folksonomy isn’t a anarchy. The reason I agree is because if a community sets the rules for using tags for categorizing data to be found easier and the community follows the rules then  there isn’t need for a higher authority to keep everyone following the rules and personally I like the use of tags.

Metadata ….. Prescriptive Data

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According to our assigned text book “Research Strategies”, Badke states that, “Any database is only as useful as its retrieval capability. If you can’t get out what you need when you need it, then what you have is a data warehouse, not a database”,

A such statement depicts the power and significance of what so called “metadata”, and other related terms which are technically- new for me!

Honestly, I have learned a lot from the reading about the technical aspects of how to deal effectively with information.

Metadata is simply- a set of data that describes and gives information about other data.

It is a descriptive information that accompanies the data being searched for in a database. It is related to other terms …. record, retrieval, and controlled vocabularies.

A record is a document that provides a description of a piece of data.

Controlled vocabularies do not depend on keyboards from titles; they deal with the topic of the book- what the book is actually about)- regardless of what the title may indicate; they are a good solution to the problem of retrieval.

combining controlled vocabulary and keyboard searching is a format of getting more creative.

There are some abbreviations relate to Library of Congress Subject Headings: UF (Used for), BT (Boarder term), NT (Narrower term), and RT (Related term).

#MetaData

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These readings opened my eyes because before all I ever knew about metadata was that it was tags embedded into digital files (ex.location of where you took a picture). But after reading chapter 4 I agree we should let go of folksonomy. All I’ve ever known was keyword search because I thought it made sense to search up pages/articles that include the words I’m looking for. But many times I’ve been led on a goose chase where I was getting results for something unrelated to my subject but because the “keywords” were there it made it’s way to my results. We do a form of metadata now called hash-tagging. I think this system sort of provides more efficient results because the content is self categorized (or tagged) using the “#” key. So instead of looking up words you can look up topics, subjects, etc.

Order through Metadata.

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The metadata talked about in Badke shows us that sometimes you have to give up some control to find what you want.  Using a subject heading search can at times be a lot more effective than a keyword search; although I still believe a keyword search is more convenient for a lot of people.  A keyword search maybe broad but it will at times like a subject heading help lead you somewhere you weren’t planning to go.  Honestly were it not for school I would seldom use a subject heading/taxonomy search mainly because a keyword search is how I usually search for anything on my phone or at home. For me a keyword search is like a bad habit I have been trying to quit but it’s just too easy to keep picking up.
I feel as though the Jessica Dye article on folksonomy was written about one year too early. I say this because almost three weeks before the article on March 21st Twitter happened; twitter in my opinion is one of the ultimate folksonomy tools and would have surely given Dye’s article even more validity.  Almost everything on twitter gets tagged no matter what it is, the whole hash-tag phenomena has taken off since twitter started being used by the public.  One problem with folksonomy happened in class when professor Leonard mispelled ‘Nicky Minaj’ in a picture search and everyone who misspelled her name and tagged her picture with a “y” showed up, but when she corrected her search and spelled it with a ‘i” it displayed a lot more pictures.  I bring this up to show that folksonomy is not always used correctly, if you misspell a word that word still gets tagged with that misspelling so any picture with that misspelling might not show up for someone who searches for it while using the correct spelling.

MetaPower

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The reading of chapter four of Badke’s book Research Strategies, an eye opening account is given about metadata and the power of controlled vocabularies. Before reading this chapter I used to think that keyword search was the ultimate way in which one could search for information when researching for a paper. I was stunned to learn that it had many flaws which  contributes to why searching for information on a research topic was so difficult in the past. Instead of struggling through trial and error on using keywords in a database search engine, it is better to use controlled vocabularies or subject headings to find what you are looking for, because it encompasses every set of data related to what you are looking for. It would be nice if this powerful tool or way of searching could be implemented to the WWW because it would make life much easier. I may be too quick to judge because the increased use of the electronic tagging system known as folksonomy might just become the WWW’s “controlled vocabulary.” The only difference is that it won’t be controlled, as it is user created which is very cool.

On the other hand the reading  Graphs by MIT Students Show the Enormously Intrusive Nature of Metadata by Crockford revealed how simple pieces of metadata from an individual’s email activities can reveal a whole lot about who they are. This was where I realized that metadata could be used for so much more than just searching for information. Despite all the positives, metadata can be used for the bad just as much as the good. Truth is that any invention that wields power faces this same problem. Look at the internet for example, it hosts a wide variety of positive features that I can’t even begin to list, but of course there are those who would use it for various malpractices. Knowing this do we stop using the internet? No, we be the responsible people that we are and use it for good.

Access wrap-up and reading/blogging for Monday, March 9

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Today we discussed access to information, especially equitable access by age, educational attainment, and economic status. We used the Pew report, “Who’s Not Online and Why?” as a starting point; see this chart for the demographics of online access, according to the report. Related to our discussion of information access via cultural institutions, here is the list of all museums that offer free/discounted admission with a CUNY ID.

On Monday we’ll hear from group #4, who will report on research and social movements from pp. 141-142 of “The Politics of Research” by Brian Martin.

Metadata (information about information) is our topic for next Monday, March 9. Please read the following for Monday:

Badke, Research Strategies, chapter 4 (our textbook, remember?)

Dye, Folksonomy: A game of high-tech (and high-stakes) tag

Crockford, Graphs by MIT Students Show the Enormously Intrusive Nature of Metadata

Your blogging assignment is one reading response blog post. Questions about the research topic assignment, due March 23? Get in touch!

~Prof. Leonard