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April 29, 2006
Digital Libraries and Metadata
In 1999, Marchionini & Fox published an article titled Progress toward digital libraries: Augmentation through integration in the Journal for Information Processing & Management. The authors lay out four dimensions of design space: technology, content, services, and community. Seems to me that we have progressed enough in the metadata and IA space that all four are not only possible but a requirement for doing business.
Because information is a basic human need, and libraries have evolved into an important institution to help communities of humans communicate in spite of differences in time and space, one key dimension of the design space is labeled “community” and reflects social, economic, political, legal, and cultural issues. This dimension includes the needs, information-seeking behaviors, and attitudes of the individuals within a community. This dimension is exceedingly complex and has to date received the least amount of attention.Technology serves as an engine pushing the field, leading to continual shifts in solutions that coalesce around what is necessary, desirable, and feasible. DL researchers have leveraged technical progress in networking, storage and retrieval, multimedia representation, and user interface design to link people to DLs and DLs to each other.
Services reflect the functionality afforded by systems serving the community of users. Access services that facilitate search and browsing have been central to DL research thus far, but there is great need for attention to reference and question answering, on-demand help and fostering of citizenship and literacy, and mechanisms to simplify participatory involvement of user communities (e.g., contributions of time and materials).
Content is often what one thinks of first in a library – books, journals, maps, art, music, and innumerable other forms and genres of expression that may have representations either outside computers, inside them, or in both versions. DL research has made good advances in digitization and representing content, and considerable work is underway to leverage metadata to transparently connect people to content in different DLs.
Technology, Content, Services and Community are emerging under different terms such as Information Architecture, Content Management, Knowledge Management, Web Services, Collaboration, and many others.
Posted by Todd at 5:59 PM
DMReview Article
When experts or professionals deal with problems, they tend to approach the problem based on historical experience, current observations and future trends. They usually recall similar experiences and draw on best practices and lessons learned. For most of us in information technology, the concepts of reuse are not new, but few of us pay homage to Christopher Alexander and his original work on utilizing patterns in architecture. The object oriented crowd picked up on patterns and changed their industry. A recent book, The Design of Sites (Van Duyne, Landay, Hong, 2002), describes a collection of patterns for building Web sites. The book begins with a short chapter on the foundations of good design, which provides principles and standards and focuses on customer-centric goals. The core of the book is the 12 design categories based on real examples, which are described in detail. Is it possible to create patterns for enterprise metadata? The first step is to establish a collection of categories where we can classify the patterns of the organization. One such collection might include structure patterns, design patterns, process patterns, content patterns, service patterns and architecture patterns.
The Patterns of Enterprise Metadata
Posted by Todd at 1:33 AM
April 28, 2006
Metadata Conference
Returning a day early from the 10th annual Wilshire Meta-Data Conference
And the 18th annual DAMA International Symposium, I wanted to express a note on the quality of the presentations as well as the content. More and more case studies of metadata are emerging (Intel, Allstate) and folks are starting to expand the definition and impact of metadata to the corporation. There were plenty of success stories and more interesting were the failed attempts. One can learn a lot more from people that pushed the envelope and failed than from those simply implementing the same solution.
Posted by Todd at 11:49 AM
April 20, 2006
Metadata Conference
The 10th Annual Wilshire Meta-Data Conference and 18th DAMA International Symposium is coming up next week where all of the Meta-deadheads will assemble for the annual knowledge sharing of best practices. Some interesting sessions this year especially in actual implementations. I have noticed a nice trend over the past years where the sessions are focusing less on the what or whay and more on the how. KNowing how it is done is far more valuable. Hope to see you there and stop by and say hello...
Posted by Todd at 2:05 AM
April 15, 2006
Semantic Web Slow Down
Ok, the initial mention of the word internet occurred in 1982. Tim Berners-Lee develops the application or framework for sharing information on the web in 1989. Within 10 years, 150 Million people are online and seeding the dot com bubble. The semantic web was first mentioned around 1999 and 7 years later we still only have a very few users and applications. One would think building off the current web would have improved the speed to market yet it seems to have slowed.
Posted by Todd at 12:52 AM
April 12, 2006
Age of Individualism
Ok I get it! I am late to the party but darn it, I finally get it. After reading Re-Imagine more times than I will admit, The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman, Funky Business by Jonas Ridderstrale and Kjelle A. Nordstrom. The Free Agent Nation by Daniel Pink, and Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, I finally understand the universal message. The age of agriculture was followed by the age of industry, which was followed by the age of information. The next age will be the Age of Individualism, not the individual (Small Difference). Now, I am faced with the question, so what? What can I or the average person do to get ready, catch up, or lead this new age? Here is my list, please contribute.
1. Education: Educate yourself and your children.
2. Gain Skills and Experience in a variety of areas
3. Develop your story; Unique and Value Add Story
4. Publish: Publish in Articles, Magazines, Books, Book Chapters, Conferences, etc.
5. Blog Daily! Hourly? Create your on blog and contribute to others
6. Develop and Design Your Web Presence (Professionalism Counts)
7. Develop your content store front with a solid Information Architecture
8. Get on a Reading Program: Books, HBR, IEEE, ACM, Newsletters, Blogs
9. Go Online and Search; Learn to Search Effectively
10. Time: 24x7, Time Management, Small Rocks, Big Rocks, You know the drill
The next step is obvious; Execution.
Posted by Todd at 11:41 AM
April 4, 2006
TDAN Online Article on the MetaCard
Organizational information sources exist throughout the enterprise and the vast majority of these sources are web enabled. Integration with disparate web pages has traditionally been done by search engines that utilize the metadata or the embedded text within the content itself. Unfortunately, more and more information sources are being built as dynamic applications versus static web pages. Dynamic applications create a problem for traditional search engines due to the inability to spider the data. This requires new forms of integration technologies. One such technology is the “MetaCard” which is built upon the library science card catalog model. The MetaCard is based on the Dublin Core metadata standard and allows traditional search technology to work without additional layers of integration effort. This article will review an implementation of the MetaCard technology in a Fortune 500 company to resolve the problem of universal asset integration
Another Meta-Data Secret: The Metacard
Posted by Todd at 11:42 PM
IA Long Term Viability
Are we heading toward the same fate as the data architect? I mentioned this warning a few days ago and I would like to follow that up with another observation: closed knowledge. While the basics functions and concepts of data architecture are well defined, the vast majority of current information is held for ransom to the highest bidder. In the form of consultants, we horde our best practices so that some one else can copy us or create a competitive advantage. I believe Paul Bear Bryant once commented that he would gladly share is playbook before each game. Knowing what and how doesn’t come close to actually doing it. I was thrilled to see that the vast majority of speakers at the IA Summit shared their slides with us. Again, only through a shared model will Information Architects create long term viability.
Posted by Todd at 7:10 PM