Digitization@METRO

Taxonomy vs Folksonomy

The November 2006 issue of D-Lib includes a commentary by Elaine Peterson, Associate Professor/Information Resources Specialist, Montana State University titled Beneath the Metadata: Some Philosophical Problems with Folksonomy where she challenges the usefulness of folksonomy as a classification tool.

The author discusses several issues she has with folksonomy and concludes that "a traditional classification scheme will consistently provide better results to information seekers."

Want to learn more about folksonomy? Then come join us at METRO for this upcoming program.

Event: Steve@METRO
What: Steve is a social tagging and folksonomy project initiated in order to explore the potential for user-generated subject descriptions of works of art in museum collections. Come learn about the Steve Project and network with your colleagues at the wine and cheese reception.
When: December 6, 2006; 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Fee: No charge but seating is limited and registration is required.
To register for this program click here.

METRO Metadata Workshops

METRO is closing out the year with a powerful series of metadata programs covering MODS, Tagging, Folksonomy, and OAI-PMH presented by experts like KB Ng and Sarah Shreeves.

METRO invites library students to register for these programs at the METRO member rate.

Workshop: Using MODS (Metadata Objet Description Schema) with XSLT
Presenter: KB Ng, Queens College GSLIS
What: MODS is a set of XML markup which can combine selected data from existing MARC 21 records with original resource description. This workshop covers how to create MODS records for online resource description and present these records over the internet by server-side processing with XSLT.
When: November 29, 2006; 10:00 AM - 4:00 PM
Fee: $75 members; $150 nonmember
To register for this workshop click here. For a list of resources to help you prepare for the workshop click here.

Event: Steve@METRO
What: "Steve" is a social tagging and folksonomy project initiated in order to explore the potential for user-generated subject descriptions of works of art in museum collections. Come learn about the Steve Project and network with your colleagues at the wine and cheese reception.
When: December 6, 2006; 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Fee: No charge but seating is limited and registration is required.
To register for this program click here.

Workshop: Interoperability, OAI-PMH, And Shareable Metadata
Presenter: Sarah Shreeves, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
What: This workshop will describe the OAI protocol (what it is, why it exists, and how it works), discuss options for exposing metadata via the OAI protocol, and describe how to make metadata more shareable for use within the OAI protocol or other sharing mechanisms.
When: December 8, 2006; 10:00 AM - 4:00 PM
Fee: $75 members; $150 nonmembers
To register for this program click here.

Open Archives Initiative Receives Mellon Grant for Object Reuse and Exchange (ORE)

The Open Archives Initiative recently received a Mellon grant "to develop and promote interoperability standards that aim to facilitate the efficient dissemination of content," which they will accomplish under the aegis of a project titled Object Reuse and Exchange (ORE).

ORE will develop standards to make possible the exchange of information about digital objects among repositories. The two-year project will be coordinated by Carl Lagoze of Cornell University Information Science and Herbert Van de Sompel of the Los Alamos Research Library.

Read the full announcement here.

MODS

METRO is offering a new workshop titled Using MODS (Metadata Object Description Schema) with XSLT on November 29, 2006. MODS is a set of XML markup which can combine selected data from existing MARC 21 records with original resource description and has been adopted by a several academic institutions as well as by the American Memory Project at the Library of Congress.

While this is an introductory workshop to MODS, participants must have a basic understanding of XML and related concepts to follow the demonstration and discussion.

The workshop presenter, Professor KB Ng, is from the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies at Queens College, CUNY and the author of Using XML: A How-To-Do-It Manual for Librarians. KB has provided the following resources which will serve as a refresher for those who are interested in taking this workshop.

Learning XML by Erik T. Ray

XML online tutorial: http://www.w3schools.com/xml/default.asp (especially see the links about schema and xsl)

MARC online tutorial: http://www.loc.gov/marc/umb/

MODS overview: http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/mods-overview.html

For more information and to register, please click here.