Getting comfortable with metadata reuseJenn RileyTwitter: @jenlrileHead, Carolina Digital Library and ArchivesUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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We want our metadata to be useful.

So we can’t stop our efforts at discovery systems we run.

And formats we define.

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David Weinberger. Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder. New York: Times Books, 2007.

People make their own connections

It’s impossible to predict (and provide metadata for) them all

Knowledge isn’t fixed

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“The solution to the overabundance of information is more information.”

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“Customers, patrons, users, and citizens are not waiting for permission to take control of

finding and organizing information… Knowledge—its content and its organization—

is becoming a social act.”

Weinberger, p. 133, p. 13

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First order organization

Second order organization

Third order organization

Weinberger’s framework

arranging things – constrained by physicality for us, the shelves

surrogate for the physical thing, with a few additional expert provided access pointsfor us, MARC records, EAD finding aids

all connections between things that anyone can imaginefor us, the web, Linked Data, users, and connections to other data sources

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Linked Data is an opportunity for us to promote third-order

engagement with special collections metadata.

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“Guide to the Bakery, Confectionery, and Tobacco Workers International Union Printed Ephemera Collection,” NYU Tamiment Library & Rober F. Wagner Labor Archives. RDF/Turtle data generated from EAD courtesy of Corey Harper, NYU Libraries.

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EAD: context through Linked Data

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That’s a start. But what if we then…

Started the process of creating links to other things?

Promoted discovery interfaces that take advantage of multiple contexts?

Feed what we learn back into our second-order metadata practices?

Moved to native Semantic Web technologies?

Provided full text, usage data, information on our processes…?

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Provenance is one of many possible contexts.

Allow users to create their own.

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But what about authority? Quality?

Control?

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12Weinberger, p. 22

“Second order organization…is often as much about authority as about

making things easier to find.”

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It’s time to let go.

The benefits outweigh the risks.

Let the users evaluate the source of information, decide what’s relevant and appropriate to them.

We never had that much control in the first place.

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“Third order practices…are the Trojan horse of the information age. As we all get used to them,

third-order practices undermine some of our most deeply ingrained ways of thinking about

the world and our knowledge of it.”

We must respond by rethinking our practices.

Quote from Weinberger, p. 22

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And now to Aaron and Matthew for some more exploration of how to do this.

These presentation slides:http://www.lib.unc.edu/users/jlriley/presentations/rbms2013/rileyRBMS2013.pptx

Thanks!jennriley@unc.edu@jenlrile on Twitter