OpenDock Project

I feel we need to develop a layered method of applying metadata dependent on the size and specificity of the digital material.

For example, an English course describing the parts of speech is fairly specific but a picture of the Taj Majhal may be used for many purposes. We have to make quality judgments about recording what something is for and what something is. It is not necessary to stick with a single metadata schema, indeed it is entirely reasonable to include "loose" user chosen tags to describe the materials. There is no necessity to achieve 100% exposure of all relevant material ( this would be nice but is not achievable ). Long involved UoL are by their very nature used in a more specific context and will benefit from a formal metadata application. Smaller, more granular materials will have much wider possible contexts of use and will best be tagged in a much looser and less rigorous way.

I think we may need adaptive and agile methods to tag and locate materials, possibly associated with specific user groups and communities of practice.

Librarianship is not to be underestimated; the use of formal metadata schema is "lore" that librarians learn by being part of an expert practising group. We will do well not to overcomplicate metadata entry for the general user case . A layered and adaptive approach to first instance metadata entry combined with continued adaptive adjustment and ranking by subsequent users is likely to yield the best results. And we might just need to include a little of Google in our searches.

Regards to all

AlanH
Knownet