Conference day 2 presentation notes:METADATA GROUP 1

Topic is really huge, too much meat to address in this scenario.

[Humorous slide]

What are the things we want to apply metadata to? What are the objects? Objects are academic content, could be used for learning or for research, or just stored somewhere forever. Can be used or repurposed as a learning object, hopefully with associated metadata. Will be findable because the appropriate metadata will have been applied.

Descriptive metadata: what is this object, what is it good for?
Administrative: who has permission to see it? who created it, who owns it, who is responsible?
Preservation: perhaps of more concern to library and preservation types who are thinking about forever and ever storage. IT types tend to only thing 2-3 years out.

Having a tough time getting hands around it: metadata awareness is something that should be grappled with early on. How can creators of objects be encouraged to think about metadata that could be associated with it.

How can we help individuals who are creating objects to come up with a strategy for applying metadata? How should they think about their objects? Example: is it ephemeral? How can we help make those decisions at the point of creation? CIC could work here.

Should work on these awareness issues together.
Perhaps collaborative training and documentation opportunities? CIC could work here.

Critical issues:
-separateness of CMS and the metadata. In order for things to be transferable, they can’t only live in the CMS.
-must create tools to simplify the creating and assigning metadata
-what are the important metadata features for the cMS?

Add'l notes:
-when do things become academic objects?
-who decides what metadata to apply (is there an institutional minimum?)
-will there be tools (can the CMS have these capabilities)
-how long to keep the object and the metadta?
-how granular[ly] should we define objects
-education of creators/producers RE: their options (low-hanging fruit)
-creators: 1) not important to many; just put up w/ no manually-added metadata: can system do it automatically? 2) could be useful to others -- need some min. level of metadata 3) legitimate personal collection -- what will good metadata give? can the library take this on with faculty sign-off?

Assumptions:
-Learning Object can reside anywhere
-creator has to make some decision about strategy

Metadata can be EXTENSIVE: -[things should be] tightly described, and a dynamic, emerging taxonomy has to be acceptable.

[Outline] Strategies:
-Decision making/decision tree (make it easy, build on user profiling)
-pilot program
-Build tools to use existing metadata schema