Digital metadata is used to describe digital objects (i.e. text documents, images, video, etc.). Digital metadata is ideally embedded in the object it describes so that is is not displaced if the object is used. Some metadata is static and never changes while some is dynamic and is used for updating information about an object and how it changes over time. Metadata can also be used to extract information about a text: language, acronyms and their meaning, names of people, time and date stamps, email addresses, phrase hierarchy, etc.
In Objects of a Biographical System, Witten states that there is little need for subject classification in a digital world. Isn't subject classification still useful for helping the user retrieve information and find other items that may be of interest? Metadata can also meet this need but is there anything subject classification can do which metadata cannot?
Witten discussed the possible future of MPEG-7 files and their potential ability to evaluate a few notes of music and identify similar melodies, to retrieve graphics or logos from a few user-made digital brush strokes, identify the source of sounds from pitch samples, and to describe movements from actions in video files. Have there been any like developments since this work was published? Are projects aiming to discern human gestures and postures from video recordings likely done using metadata from MPEG-7 files or some other technology?
Anne Gilliland discusses metadata's long-term benefits. She says the following,
"What we do know is that the existence of many types of metadata will prove critical to the continued online and intellectual accessibility and utility of digital resources and the information objects that they contain, as well as the original objects and collections to which they relate. In this sense, metadata provides us with the Rosetta stone that will make it possible to decode information objects and their transformation into knowledge in the cultural heritage information systems of the future."
Is she referring to digital objects as the future artifacts of our culture? If so, what digital objects may be of importance to our predecessors? I wonder if they will have interoperability issues or if technology will have solved problems like interoperability by then.
Weibel's discusses difficult and unanticipated problems in the creation of a universal standard for metadata creation. He says the following,
" To borrow from the oldest joke of the Dismal Profession, put all the data modelers in the world end to end, and you won't reach a conclusion (we did, but it took ten years to manage it)."
What kind of problems is he referring to? How do data couplers help to find solutions? What problems have been resolved since this article was written (Summer 2005)?
If professionals are unable to come to a consensus on metadata standards, is it possible to create software that can identify the different standards used and accommodate them simultaneously (or even convert them to a standard format)?
- Ian H. Witten. “How to Build a Digital Library”. Morgan Kaufmann Publisher. 2002. ISBN: 1-558-60790-0.
- Anne J. Gilliland. Introduction to Metadata, pathways to Digital Information: 1: Setting the Stage http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/standards/intrometadata/setting.html
- Stuart L. Weibel, “Border Crossings: Reflections on a Decade of Metadata Consensus Building”, D-Lib Magazine, Volume 11 Number 7/8, July/August 2005 http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july05/weibel/07weibel.html
