Week 3 (or 4), Sept. 15-Sept. 22

Muddiest Point

We touched on this only briefly during the lecture, but I'd like to better understand DSpace and how libraries can use it?

Reading Notes

I was glad I was able to read some of the reading notes from other students -- it helped clarify things a bit -- the Dublin Core Data Model article was bewildering.

My ideas about metadata had been rather foggy, and so the article on metadata was very enlightening. Metadata can reflect content, context, and structure. In libraries, bibliographic metadata provides access to contents, f.e. through indexes and catalogs. In archives and museums, metadata often describes the context of records and enables authentication of records and objects (f.e. accession records). Metadata is not only description, but also relate to administration, accession, and preservation and use of collections. Representing the structure of objects is central to metadata development. Systems should reflect content, but should also include additional information about the content. This also helps to specify the intellectual integrity of objects, and maintaining the relationships between objects. This has become a central aim in the preservation of digital objects. It was particularly interesting to read about the role of metadata in digital preservation, as it ensures that digital information, or information objects as she calls them, will survive through migrations of hardware and software and will be preserved.

It was helpful to get a sense of the different types of databases, but the article was only slightly clearer to me than the Dublin Core Data Model one (I tried reading both from various directions, but it didn't do much good) -- I'd like to see it illustrations/models of various models of databases, maybe that will make things a bit clearer.

Comments
I commented on Annie's LIS 2600 blog:
http://annie-lis2600-at-pitt-blog.blogspot.com/