Metadata and Databases - Bella DeMarco
data is data is data is data!
Metadata is data about data. It allows for us to classify, locate, organize, and digitize accessibly. There are three classifications of metadata. Those being descriptive, administrative, and operational. Descriptive metadata tells us basic information about data online such as time, file type, and classification. Administrative metadata organizes metadata into larger sets of records and is commonly used in educational facilities and libraries, which makes it a valuable resource to digital humanities. Operational metadata communicates roles, relations of files, functions of files, and operability. This is applicable to my project because it is an online memorial and digital archive which uses many different formats and processing tools. Because of the digitization process of the source material from the Boston bombing, the need for classification and operability results in clear usage of metadata. Through physical material being digitized, online interactive response, and the archiving of various forms of media this site it became clear to me the role of organization and classification in metadata. I think that metadata will be very common in my future, as I will be joining the digital humanities world once I graduate. I think its valuable to learn the inner workings of the digitization process. By identifying and creating metadata I will be able to organize, classify, and describe my own digital material.
The purpose of Databases as I understand them is to store large amounts of data in an organized manner, and equally importantly, creating relationships between the data itself. For example, you might store information about people as a table, and then link attributes to those people relationally. Such as, addresses, sex, age, workplace, DOB, etc.… in my project, the database is like a house, storing the archival information and artifacts. The database provides the structure required to store massive of archival information and easily retrieve that information for the purpose of display. A critical value of databases is that they provide easily understood programmatic access to the data, using SQL.
I liked how you classified each type of metadata and explained how each type have a specific purpose. I will also be using metadata in my project to keep track of the author, date created, date modified, and file size. All of these things will ensure the website I'm using for my project is current. My project is the evolution of time magazine covers from the year 1923 to 2009. The metadata that is easily viewable on the site includes the date that the article was published and the author. The included metadata can also help me relocate the website each time I need to. Metadata also plays a huge role in making sure the viewer understands the actual information on the site. It helps them understand where the information is being pulled from, weather or not the writer is credible, and how long ago the site has been updated. The data may not make sense if the article hasn't been updated and the information is completely irrelevant from current day.
ReplyDeleteBella,
ReplyDeleteyou do a great job highlighting the importance of metadata: the possibility of uses and how its organizational capacity makes life easier on many people. That you see a clear tie to your project of analysis and that you articulate it here helped me realize how important it is to my mapping project. I see that metadata and database structuring will be important not just in analysis this time around, but providing solutions to the customers we'll be working with; I'm especially excited to see how different people will approach database building when we get to our next unit.