Metadata

“Metadata is “data about data”, of any sort in any media. Metadata has been with us since the first librarian made a list of the items on a shelf of handwritten scrolls. The term “meta” comes from a Greek word that denotes “alongside, with, after, next.” More recent Latin and English usage would employ “meta” to denote something transcendental, or beyond nature. Metadata, then, can be thought of as data about other data. It is the Internet-age term for information that librarians traditionally have put into catalogs, and it most commonly refers to descriptive information about Web resources.

A metadata record consists of a set of attributes, or elements, necessary to describe the resource in question. For example, a metadata system common in libraries — the library catalog — contains a set of metadata records with elements that describe a book or other library item: author, title, date of creation or publication, subject coverage, and the call number specifying location of the item on the shelf.”

Usually it is not possible to distinguish between (plain) data and metadata because:

• Something can be data and metadata at the same time. The headline of an article is both its title (metadata) and part of its text (data).
• Data and metadata can change their roles. A poem, as such, would be regarded as data, but if there is a song that uses it as lyrics, the whole poem could be attached to an audio file of the song as metadata. Thus, the labeling depends on the point of view.

Moreover, metadata can be classified by:

• Content. Metadata can either describe the resource itself (for example, name and size of a file) or the content of the resource (for example, “This video shows a boy playing football”).
• Mutability. With respect to the whole resource, metadata can be either immutable (for example, the “Title” of a video does not change as the video itself is being played) or mutable (the “Scene description” does change).
• Logical function. There are three layers of logical function: at the bottom the subsymbolic layer that contains the raw data itself, then the symbolic layer with metadata describing the raw data, and on the top the logical layer containing metadata that allows logical reasoning using the symbolic layer types of metadata are:

1. descriptive metadata.
2. administrative metadata.
3. structural metadata.
4. technical metadata.
5. use metadata

SOURCES:

• Metadata. (2010, January 28). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 18:00, January 28, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Metadata&oldid=320011286

Documentación tradicional vs. Documentación digital

Como muchas otras cosas, la documentación es otro de los factores que ha tenido importantes cambios gracias al avance tecnológico. Por ello, es  vital tener una idea clara de las diferencias que presentan, así como su utilidad.

Se denomina documentación tradicional a cualquier unidad significativa de información que haya sido registrada que permita su almacenamiento y su posterior recuperación. Así como, cualquier soporte que permita, simultáneamente, multiplicar ilimitadamente la consulta de la información en él registrada y postergarla indefinidamente en el tiempo. Nos referimos a documentación tradicional cuando hablamos de libros, periódicos, cartas, facturas, etc.

Por otro lado, tenemos la documentación digital, que viene a ser cualquier unidad significativa independiente de información registrada en un diskette, Cd Rom o disco duro. Podemos decir que,  una información está en línea cuando es posible acceder a ella desde terminales u ordenadores remotos, a través de redes de área local, de área amplia o bien de combinaciones de ambas. Se registra en un medio electrónico a través de codificaciones que se basan en el uso de combinaciones de señales eléctricas positivas (con el dígito “1″) y negativas (con el dígito “0″).

Junto con esto, debemos tener en cuenta las tres propiedades del soporte digital:

• Computabilidad: La información puede ser procesada o “calculada” por un ordenador.
• Virtualidad: La información digital no está sujeta a las limitaciones propias de la analógica.
• Capacidad: Ausencia de limitaciones prácticas en cuanto al volumen de información al que puede tener acceso en línea mediante interfaces unificadas.

Entre estos dos tipos de documentación existen ciertas ventajas:

• Documentación digital:

-  Permite que el usuario pregunte por contenidos, ingrese comentarios, modifique o agregue contenidos.

-  Dispone de información multimedia (texto, sonido e imagen).

-  Es posible  recuperar la información.

-  La cantidad de información por unidad de volumen es infinitamente superior.

-  Tiene acceso a los títulos.

-  Ofrece la posibilidad de establecer relación de una palabra o “saltar” de un lugar a otro del documento.

-  Fácil de publicar y también de sacarlo de la circulación.

• Documentación tradicional:

-  La confortabilidad

-  Practicabilidad

Visto esto, podemos señalar que la documentación tradicional está en ligera desventaja comparanda con la documentación digital. A medida que la tecnología crece, seguramente la documentación tradicional acabará por desaparecer.

BIBLIOGRAFÍA:

• Sistemas de información, las propiedades de la información digital. http://www.elprofesionaldelainformacion.com/contenidos/2001/diciembre/5.pdf
• Documentos digitales: A. definición y características.  http://www.msinfo.info/propuestas/documentos/documentos_digitales.html
  

Social Bookmarking

Nowadays, there are a lot of inter users that experiment with sites such as Delicious (formerly del.icio.us), Citeulike, Backflip etc. You maybe have heard about the concept of social bookmarking, but what it means?

As Wikipedia says, “Social Bookmarking is a method for Internet users to share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources. Unlike file sharing, the resources themselves aren’t shared, merely bookmarks that reference them. Descriptions may be added to these bookmarks in the form of metadata, so that other users may understand the content of the resource without first needing to download it for themselves. Such descriptions may be free text comments, votes in favor of or against its quality, or tags that collectively or collaboratively become a folksonomy. Folksonomy is also called social tagging, “the process by which many users add metadata in the form of keywords to shared content”".

The concept of shared online bookmarks dates back to April 1996 with the launch of itList, the features of which included public and private bookmarks. Within the next three years, online bookmark services became competitive, with venture-backed companies such as those who I already mention.

Each user can see what others have chosen and add their description to the bookmark, or votes in favour or against them. Besides, like many other things it has its advantgaes and dissadvantages.

Advantages:

- We can keep our favourite references on the net instead of saving them in a computer.

- We can keep an eye on themes we are interested in.

- The use of simple “tags” is more confortable than keep them in folders.

- We can follow the links that other users add.

Disadvantages:

- There is no pre-established system of keywords or categories.

- Users can create ‘tags’ too customized with little meaning for others.

Sources:

- Bookmark (web). (2009, October 8). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 18:41, October 18, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bookmark_(web)&oldid=318755541

- Social bookmarking. (2009, October 16). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 18:40, October 18, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Social_bookmarking&oldid=320232562

- ITList Information Technology Blog. Retrieved 18:41, October 18, 2009, from http://www.itlist.com/

- Social Bookmarking – Compartiendo enlaces de Internet. Retrieved 18:50, October 18, 2009, from http://eibar.org/blogak/prospektiba/es/archive/2005/02/20/178