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Metadata, library catalogs, and FRBR

I am really glad I'm a week behind on blogging for class, actually. I read Gradmann's blog about our class blogs, and realized I had better do some more research to find out about these terms: FRBR, ontologies, semantic web, and the like. So in total, I actually read about 10 articles or websites to find enough info to read these!

Metadata, the word and concept, was introduced to me in LIS 5033 with Drs. Martens and Kim, and I just found it hilariously nerdy (think Weird Al's White and Nerdy). "Data about data," I believe was the definition given. Of course, after researching for 1.5 semesters, and especially after reading these articles by Gradmann and Mohamad, I understand and appreciate the importance of the study of data about data.

What I found fascinating in Mohamad's report in the impact of metadata in web resources discovering is that with many search engines, tagging metadata doesn't make a big difference without knowing the algorithm that search engine uses. Which seems useless, because you probably have to work for Google or Ask.com to find out. This is a huge findability issue, because if your website doesn't rank high in a websearch, nobody can find it. But if tagging metadata doesn't work, then what does? Gradmann's proposal for using FRBR for more findability for library's catalogs is genius. I always thought that's how things worked on the World Wide Web anyway, that everything is connected- but now that I know a bit more from working in a library and studying the science thereof, I realize humans do a LOT more of the work than the general public realizes.

In my last blog, I ranted about the government dumping work on libraries because they've got it together, but if (more hopefully, when) library catalogs can utilize this technology, service offered would be on a much higher plane than it currently is (in my opinion).

Specifically, I get patrons asking about series of books, what is the title of number 5 in this series- it takes me a trip to the software program our catalog runs on (yes, Gradmann hit the nail on the head here- page 72 of his article FRBR: Hype or Cure All? in part G: libraries could be no longer dependant on vendors for software), Novelist database, possibly FirstSearch through OCLC, and maybe even Amazon before I can find the answer. This takes anywhere from 1-5 minutes, when it should really take 30 seconds to a minute to process.

Even though I don't fully comprehend the details, I think the main points are: current metadata tagging doesn't work, but FRBR probably will, so let's just go ahead and start doing it.

Watch out, here I come!

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