For NISO-BISG Forum, ALA Annual 2017

1. Understanding Metadata: Looking
Forward
Jenn Riley (@jenlrile)
Associate Dean, Digital Initiatives
McGill University Library and Archives

3.  Metadata in everyday life
 How it’s used in cultural heritage organizations
 Types of metadata (descriptive, technical, structural, etc)
 Storing and sharing metadata (databases, XML, RDF)
 Standardization
 Metadata languages used on the Web
 Metadata languages used in the cultural heritage sector
 Generating metadata
What’s covered
June 23, 2017 NISO-BISG Forum, ALA 2017

4. Understanding Metadata talks about a sea-change
June 23, 2017 NISO-BISG Forum, ALA 2017
"Full fathom five thy father lies,
Of his bones are coral made,
Those are pearls that were his eyes,
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change,
into something rich and strange,
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell,
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them, ding-dong, bell.”
--Shakespeare, The Tempest

5. Fueled by Linked Data technologies
https://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/lld/XGR-lld-vocabdataset-20111025/

6. So what’s different?
June 23, 2017 NISO-BISG Forum, ALA 2017

7. 1. It’s not “our” data and “their”
data – it’s one big graph.
June 23, 2017 NISO-BISG Forum, ALA 2017

8. It’s about the connections
https://linkedjazz.org/network/

9. 2. The scale is growing.
At Web pace.
June 23, 2017 NISO-BISG Forum, ALA 2017

10. http://hangingtogether.org/?p=4167; September 2014

11. 3. There is no choice but to rely on
more intelligence in the system.
June 23, 2017 NISO-BISG Forum, ALA 2017

12. We need to make use of the expert work being done
June 23, 2017 NISO-BISG Forum, ALA 2017
Image: http://researchhubs.com/

13. 4. The information age has provided
a new definition of “authority.”
June 23, 2017 NISO-BISG Forum, ALA 2017

14. https://inspiringnsw.org.au/2017/05/30/citizen-science-funding-boost-3/

15. 5. Someone else is going to do it. For
free. And very possibly even better.
LOTS better.
June 23, 2017 NISO-BISG Forum, ALA 2017

17. 6. Open is an expectation.
June 23, 2017 NISO-BISG Forum, ALA 2017

18. June 23, 2017 NISO-BISG Forum, ALA 2017
Photo by Soraya S., https://flic.kr/p/78gW9T

19.  Rethink workflows
 Focus on the what rather than the how
 Rethink business models
 Commodification has evolved: Systems → Information → Intelligence
 Seek orders of magnitude growth in integrations, not individual deals
 Look for data we can use from elsewhere
 Publish our data so others can use it
 Follow standards, but don’t be paralyzed by them
What does this mean for us?
June 23, 2017 NISO-BISG Forum, ALA 2017

20.  jenn.riley@mcgill.ca
 @jenlrile
 These presentation slides:
http://www.jennriley.com/presentations/alaannual2017/
nisoForum.pptx
 Understanding Metadata: http://www.niso.org/publications/
press/understanding_metadata
Thank you!
June 23, 2017 NISO-BISG Forum, ALA 2017