An Expanding Universe.
Metadata and Accessibility of Digital Information
Johannes Hofman[1] 
Paper, presented at the 3d DLM-Forum, titled ‘@ccess and preservation of electronic information: best practices and solutions’, in Barcelona, May 7-8, 2002
Introduction
The increasing use of information technology
(IT) has changed our way of dealing with information. On the one hand IT offers
us new ways of creating, using, and making available information and on the
other hand it also requires new approaches just because of that, and because of
the different nature of digital information. Nonetheless to date a huge mass of
digital information resources is available e.g. on the world wide web, and is
growing every minute. Accessibility in this respect is a crucial feature of
this digital information. How can that be achieved and above all maintained? To
what extent are traditional tools and approaches still sufficient? That are
questions that many organisations are facing to date.
In this respect the issue of metadata is all
over the place. Everybody seems to have discovered this subject. Especially in
the world of the world wide web people are getting increasingly concerned in
information resource discovery and in better organising the overwhelming amount
of information that is available. It shows the growing importance of the world
wide web, but we have to be aware that this is not the only domain where
information is managed and maintained. Business companies, memory
organisations, such as libraries, archives and museums, government organisations and so on, they all
create and manage huge information sources and they all have to deal with issues
as how to maintain them and how to keep them accessible and understandable. The
World Wide Web is in this respect in
most cases ‘just’ a channel for distribution and dissemination, be it an
essential one.
Two perspectives can be distinguished here and
that is the perspective of the creator and custodian or preserver on the one
hand and the perspective of the searcher or user on the other. Both
perspectives have to be satisfied in order to be effective in the area of
accessibility. Metadata play a crucial role in it.
The approaches concerning metadata that are
taken, can be small or very broad in scope. They range from specific sets of
metadata in a specific domain (e.g. geographical data) to a (de facto) standard
for information resource discovery, such as the Dublin Core metadata set, to
frameworks that help organisations to organise and manage their information
sources and make them available and accessible as in the case of record keeping
metadata standards. These different perspectives and approaches show us the
scope and also the underlying complexity of the issue. Another approach in this
respect is the industrial or technical view. It takes the possibilities of IT
as a starting point, and provides tools like automatic indexing, full text
retrieval, fuzzy logic, artificial intelligence etc. The issue is then how do
they fit into the picture, how do they contribute, or what problems do they
solve?
There is a plethora of initiatives, projects
and ongoing research in different domains that are dealing with the issues
described and that creates another problem. How to co-ordinate all these
efforts, that do not only take place in one domain, but at the same time in
many different domains and communities and from different viewpoints? The capability of internet and e-mail in
connecting people may be a resourceful instrument in overcoming that problem,
but still action is needed to cope with it. Some cross-domain collaborative
projects are already emerging and will help in exchanging information about new
or other initiatives world wide and in stimulating new research.
Nonetheless it is necessary to identify how
all these initiatives and their underlying questions and answers relate to each
other. In the end it has to be the human being, in the quality of user, that
should benefit from the results of all the work being done.
In this paper I will try to identify the main
issues relating to metadata, the different perspectives taken in different
domains and related projects, to some extent discuss how they relate to each
other, and what possible approach can be taken. The challenge is to achieve
better co-ordination and to identify ways forward.
What are the issues?
Perspectives and purposes
In order to be able to understand the complex
area of metadata and the role they play, it is necessary to identify what the
(main) issues are and what is being pursued in all these different
projects. In general one could say that
depending on their point of view these efforts aim at discovering, disclosing
and retrieving information, at enabling understanding and interpretation, or
thirdly at enabling management and preservation.
The essence of metadata is that they provide
us with the necessary information to understand and use information. It starts
for example already with the need for communicating. An e-mail message needs
information to whom it has to be sent or from whom it is coming, and what the
subject is. We may also want to send a copy to somebody else. As soon as we
receive a message we want to keep information about when it was received (date
and time), and whether it was a reply or just a first message. Other
information that may need to be kept is, where we have stored it and under what
number and/or name, what happened since then (did it stay unchanged), how it is
related to other messages or other documents, and so on. It is all metadata.
Some people say that a reason for collecting
metadata about digital objects is, that it is easier to handle a small set of metadata
than the objects themselves. That is one argument, but there are other more
important principles.
To be able to use information resources it is
necessary to satisfy at least three basic requirements. These requirements are:
to be able to find the information, subsequently to be able to interpret it and
finally to know whether the information can be trusted or not.[2]
Depending on the domain in which it is created and used these requirements may
differ in strictness. In an organisation that is vulnerable to law suits
requirements for authenticity and reliability of information or records will be
severe, but in case information is retrieved for more informal reasons the
requirements of authenticity and integrity will be less, but those for
retrievability, interpretability and meaningfulness will still be important.
It is clear that in relation to the world
wide web much attention is being paid to information discovery and retrieval
and with reason. After all one of the main goals is to find and use information.
Retrievability however only makes sense if all the basic requirements are
satisfied. In the following section the basic requirements are further
characterised.
Retrievability
The main thing is to be able to find
information, but above all information that is relevant to you, or that answers
your question. That is the ultimate goal of the work being done in all kinds of
organisations that make information resources available.
Searching information on the WWW is enabled through search engines, which allow people to enter keywords representing subjects they are interested in, hoping they will find information resources that will satisfy their needs. The well known issue here is the huge amount of hits that are in most cases returned or provided to the user. Although there are mechanisms that value the information resources to what extent they comply with the keywords and arrange the information sources accordingly, there are also many mechanisms that arrange the sources according to other criteria, such as the amount of links or the occurrences of keywords on webpages. The amount of tricks and deceptive methods used here is huge however and makes one suspicious about the retrieval results. Some people applaud or rely on the possibility to search on the content of documents (full text retrieval) as an easy and useful way of finding the right information. They easily forget however that the use of words in documents is not controlled by any mechanism, except for the human mind and that has proven to be very unreliable and inconsistent in this respect. So using this method offers hardly any consolation, but probably more frustration. Perhaps in the best case it may be used as an additional tool for retrieving information resources.
As such this is not a really effective way of
searching. Which requirements in relation to retrievability should be
satisfied? Essential is that objects have to be identifiable and to be located.
A very important issue in this respect is the unique identifier that has to be
persistently linked to the object. The uniqueness is dependent on the domain in
which objects will be used and can or should be extended to all domains,
certainly if we talk about the world wide web. Mostly an identifier will be
unique only within the domain in which the document or information object has
been created, not for other domains. The well known problem with the current
identifier, i.e. URL’s is that they are not reliable for finding information,
since they are location-oriented (e.g. web domain name). When that location
changes, and that happens often, the web-address changes. Efforts are being
made to solve this problem. Examples are URN and DOI initiatives. Whether they
will succeed, is still a question.
Apart from being locatable it is necessary to
structure or organise and describe the information objects. Different methods
are available for doing so. Examples can be found in libraries (mostly subject
based, e.g. UDC) and archives (mostly function or activity based, e.g. business
classification schemes). The structure establishes intermediate levels which
allow better navigation and make retrievability easier.
Understandability
As soon as the information object has been
found and presented, one has to be able to understand and interpret it. Otherwise
we cannot value the content in relation to the question we have. That means
that information about the origin has to be available, e.g. why and how has it
once been created and used, does it have a relationship with other documents or
information objects and so on. It might be that not all of this information is
necessary for each question, but it has to be available. This meta-information
(metadata) has to be described and linked to an object. Issues that may play a
role here are, is it written in a language we understand, do we understand
enough about the background of the object - which issue may become very
important if the object has been created a long time ago - or is the
information resource coming out of another domain of knowledge or activity,
that we are not familiar with. It all requires metadata that has been captured
at its creation or may be added afterwards. These metadata can be embedded in
the object itself or can be external or both.
Trust
Finally if we have found an object and are able
to interpret it, we still need to have a feeling about the trustworthiness of
the presented information. In a digital world this has become even more
necessary, because everything in cyberspace is information originating from all
kinds of sources, and worse, because digital information has no fixed form and
as such is very volatile and vulnerable to alteration or mutilation. In the
case of the world wide web this is aggravated by the fact that it is not a
controlled environment. So the information has to be taken care of continuously
behind ‘the screens’. If not, it will be difficult to prove that it has not
been tampered with. In some cases that may not be an issue, but in many cases
it will, especially in the case of law suits or research for instance.
The history of how the object has been
managed (can be e.g. an audit trail) is essential for proving that the
information presented, is not corrupted and therefore trustworthy. Proper
management requires all kinds of procedures, methods and measures that ensure a
safe environment for digital resources. In the Inter Pares project efforts have
been made to identify the requirements that contribute to or provide trust and
how these should be implemented in preservation systems in order to achieve the
desired outcome: trust in the results presented based on the search and
reproduction methods. Tools as digital signatures can be used as additional
mechanisms that help to ensure this trustworthiness. Several other initiatives
are underway to identify attributes and functionality for ensuring reliability
of information, such as the ISO Records management standard and the RLG report
on ‘Attributes of a trusted digital repository’.[3]
The basic requirements as discussed do not
fundamentally differ between different domains. The emphasis may be different
or the strictness of the requirements, but in fact all three sets of basic
requirements have to be accomplished always. Where in records management or
archival communities these goals or compliance to these requirements are being
pursued in carrying out records and archival management, in other domains such
as libraries this management area is mostly called (digital) ‘preservation’.
The difference is that the latter focuses on the continuing usability and
availability of digital information objects, being mostly electronic
publications and more and more web resources.
Record keeping or records management is the discipline that deals with
records from their creation on for as long as they are needed, which can be for
‘eternity’. As such it can be considered to have a broader scope. Appraisal and
describing the interrelationships between records are core activities.
At the moment these approaches seem to be
more or less competing with each other, because communication between the two
communities does not really exist, only on ad hoc basis. There is a
predominance of the library community. Whatever the reason for this may be, in
order to improve information exchange or cross domain searching it is necessary
to find ways to identify the commonalities, to achieve more synergy by using
skills from different domains, and see how these can be used as a basis for
further research and development. Besides, there are other communities, such as
research institutions with scientific data, cultural heritage or industry (e.g.
pharmaceutical industry) trying within their own domain to find solutions as
well. More openness and information exchange in this area is needed, in order
to learn from each other. That is also necessary for another reason, because
apart from the above mentioned basic
but essential requirements there is another relevant issue, called interoperability. In the openness of a
networked environment such as the World Wide Web it is necessary to co-ordinate
the efforts to improve communication and exchange of information between
domains. However there is the issue of different semantics. A publisher in a
library environment uses a different terminology than people in public
administration or e-government for instance. It is the unavoidable problem of
similar terms in different contexts for different concepts or of different
terms for similar concepts. These different domains have each their own
perspective and domain bound terminology and that will lead to different
metadata sets. How to reconcile the different interests or perspectives? What
solutions or approaches are available?
In the different domains where this issue is
addressed, there is a growing awareness of this interdependence. So initiatives
are developed to learn about what is happening elsewhere and to develop
instruments that enable interoperability. Examples are for instance the Harmony
project that aims at achieving semantic interoperability between different sets
of metadata in e-publishing so users can search (electronic) publications on
the web uniformly, and the European SCHEMAS project that tries to establish an
information service that provides information about the different metadata
schemas that are developed and how they relate to each other. It also tries to
map them.[4]
Both projects build heavily on Dublin Core
developments. It is remarkable however that developments in the area of records
management or record keeping until now hardly have been taken into account.
That might have two reasons: there is nothing to report on in this area and/or
what is there does not fit the needs of the community or at least that is what
people think. A third reason may be the fact that this area is not well known
to the outside world. I guess it is a
combination of the latter two.
Longevity or preservation
There is another dimension, if we extend interoperability in time. It will mean that we have to take care of the ongoing (technical) readability and the meaningfulness of the information objects and that concerns the area of preservation or management of information resources over time. Both aspects of preservation, intellectual and technical, have to be addressed and need permanent maintenance in order to keep the information resources involved accessible and understandable. The same goes for the meta-information about them.
Theory,
methods and practices
The next step will be how to implement the
above mentioned requirements. Summarising the above paragraph the following
aspects and activities can be distinguished:
1)
description of the information resources (either publications or
records or data sets)
2)
persistent identification through time and across domains
3)
ongoing contextualisation to provide meaning to information sources
through time
4)
interoperability between different sets of metadata used in different
domains
5)
standardisation at different levels (as regards to e.g. structure,
semantics, value and/or content).
Although these aspects and areas of research
are not mutually exclusive and the
overview is not exhaustive, it shows the complexity of it.
Instead of discussing all these issues in
detail I like to take a slightly different approach and try to identify a core
set of activities to make and keep information accessible. Basically the
following instruments or methods can be distinguished:
-
Appraisal and selection of what will be
preserved. This is always necessary, in order to preserve no information that
is not needed and has no value. Inherent to this is the necessity of disposing
of information as soon as it is no longer needed (clearing up).
-
Structuring or clustering of information
resources according to certain criteria. In the case of records this
structuring activity is done mostly based on business needs by using for instance
classification schemes and has two reasons:
-
to cluster the documents or any other information entities that are
interrelated (in business processes these documents are evidence how a certain
case has been handled for instance). That can be done almost automatically,
since the documents reflect a business process and the way a case is processed.
The objective is to articulate or express the documentary context and to
maintain the coherence between documents.[5]
-
to cluster information around subject/business activities in an
organisation that created the information. This is mostly done at a higher
level. In libraries structuring takes place mostly based on subject
classification.
-
the third main instrument is ‘describing’ the information objects
by ‘labelling’ them, e.g. through a classification scheme, and by making them
identifiable. For records this description can be largely derived from the
activity that creates them. As indicated one of the main areas for adding
metadata is also to provide contextual information on information resources as
in the case of records. That makes it possible to understand and interpret
them. These metadata provide information about the origin or provenance,
nature, state, content, structure and access of an object so we can establish
or assess the value, reliability, authenticity etc. Essential is to keep the
resources meaningful through time.
In both the recordkeeping and archiving
community and the library community these methods are well known and used since
long. The application of them will be different because of the different nature
of the material in custody.
Different approaches are underway in order to
deal with these issues. It is hard to distinguish the many different
initiatives in different domains and with different perspectives and to keep up
with new developments. As already indicated they take place mainly in the area
of information resource discovery. Some of these approaches are object
oriented, some are process oriented, some are function oriented or even a
combination of these.
Examples of object oriented approaches are
for instance information resource discovery initiatives such as Dublin Core, as
well as the European MiReG project (Managing Information Resources for
e-Government).[6] Function oriented
approaches are the Open Archives Initiative (OAI), trying to achieve
interoperability in the publishing area, or CEDARS, the Research Libraries
Group (RLG), and the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) in the
preservation area.[7] Others are
the ISO Records Management Standard 15489 and its consequences for
metadata, and the Archiving Metadata
Forum (AMF) in the area of record keeping, though they may also be called
(business) process oriented.[8]
One of the instruments that is being
introduced to serve as a describing
mechanism, is the Dublin Core metadata set which offers some control on
retrieval of information resources. It allows to add information to a document,
publication or webpage that is not within the document itself for instance. In
the world of internet it seems as if the Dublin Core metadata set is the only
tool available. With this ‘hammer’ some people try to make a ‘nail’ of
everything. Notwithstanding its merits and the fact that it has been adopted
world wide as a de facto standard for information resource discovery, it has
however its limitations as a publication and resource discovery based
instrument. That is shown for instance in attempts to extend this standard with
new elements to satisfy other requirements, such as in the case of the
Australian Government Locator System (AGLS), where 4 elements are added to the
original 15 DC elements. Unfortunately there exist also ideas to extend this
set with recordkeeping elements. This approach is completely denying the
complex and different nature of record keeping metadata.
A rather recent and interesting development
is the emergence of the semantic web and with it ontology. Ontologies describe
and structure terms of a certain domain of knowledge into a controlled
vocabulary, and as such structure the metadata into hierarchical structures /
classes, subclasses etc . It provides a tool for identifying the relationships
between terms in that domain. This approach of adding semantics to information
resources will enable intelligent agents to search much more efficiently and
effectively.
Apart from these more sophisticated
approaches industry provides as indicated tools such as automatic indexing.
They promise to make things easier, but the question is do they really? Such
techniques are dependent on the use of words and terms in documents and as can
be expected that is not consistent. The result of automatic indexing, how
intelligent it may be done, can never be as good as deliberate and structured
metadata creation, capture and management.
An important issue in this respect is to
ensure that adequate metadata is generated at the moment of creation of the
document or source, that is captured and maintained in a useful way and
persistently linked to it. A pro-active approach is much more efficient than a
retrospective one, in which case information resources are labelled or
‘manipulated’ when they already exist. The proactive way might be ‘easier’ or
perhaps more natural to achieve in a business activity environment than a more
open environment as for instance that of publishing (books or webpages), but it
is essential from a cost-effective point of view.
If the requirements for metadata are clearly
identified, it will be possible to develop software tools that in the case of
records will enable automatic capture of these metadata from the business
system with which the records were created, itself or from closely related
systems, such as workflow systems. By integrating metadata capture in software
applications the cumbersome task of gathering metadata that will give meaning
to information sources of whatever kind will be more easily accomplished.
In this respect it is interesting to see what is happening in practice, for example in e-government initiatives. Several governments are now trying to establish standards and frameworks for metadata, in order to make interoperability between government organisations possible. These standards so far focus mainly on information resource discovery. However there are also some interesting examples to establish and include recordkeeping metadata sets for government agencies, such as in Canada, Australia and the UK. Each of them tries to identify a minimum set that should guide government organisations in managing and maintaining their records.
The Canadian ‘record keeping metadata
requirements’ are produced in January 2001 and consist of a minimum set of 26
metadata elements that allows organisations to describe and share information
and meanwhile facilitates interoperability.[9]
Eleven of these elements overlap with the Dublin Core metadata set. The
Australian Recordkeeping Metadata Standard for Commonwealth agencies (RKMS)
consists of 20 elements of which 8 are mandatory. These sets of elements
however are very high level and need further refinement and explanation with
sub-elements and qualifiers to be implemented and used.
Government organisations are free to add
these specific elements or sub-elements. In general the Australian minimum set
consist of three parts, describing the organisation, the document or record and
the management history of the record respectively. The set however is focusing
on records, and not describing the full context of it.[10]
With this set though agencies at least know what metadata they should capture
in their recordkeeping systems.
Although the RKMS intends to describe the
records and is not focusing on retrieval of records it is the idea that it
should be in line with information resource discovery metadata sets as much as
possible. In the case of the Australian RKMS a strong relationship and overlap
exists with the above mentioned Australian Government Locator Service (AGLS).
This set is accompanied by the Australian
Government Interactive Functions Thesaurus (AGIFT), that is an addition of the
function element of the AGLS standard and provides a controlled vocabulary for
describing government functions, which creates a strong link between
information resource discovery and record keeping.[11]
This approach reflects awareness that it is
necessary to link both worlds, a view which sees resource discovery metadata as
a subset of recordkeeping metadata.
The third example is the ‘E-Government
Framework for metadata’ in the UK as published in 2001. It recognises the need
for standards to ensure consistency in effective information management and
intends to provide a framework for government organisations for dealing with
resource discovery and records management. The main objectives are to enable
effective search through metadata instead of the resources themselves and to
make people confident that the retrieved source being presented is the best
one. The framework introduces the Dublin Core as the accepted standard, though
admitting that this will not be sufficient, and envisages also the development
of a rather ambitious pan-government thesaurus.
These examples show the increasing awareness
that a broad metadata framework is necessary, which includes both information
resource discovery and management metadata. It will not only make better
communication between government organisations possible, but also if properly
implemented compliance with requirements on trust and understandability.
The fact that metadata tags, such as provided
by the Dublin Core set, are meant for information resource discovery, makes it
possible to identify the possible overlap with record keeping metadata, which
are mainly focusing on the enduring interpretability, authenticity and
integrity of a specific set of information resources, namely records.
Towards a common framework
for metadata
The basic notion that can be derived from the
previous paragraphs is that two different, seemingly contradictory viewpoints
can be distinguished:
1)
the needs of a user or (re)searcher, including re-use of information
resources for other purposes than they were created, and
2)
the need of managing and maintaining information sources in order to
keep them trustworthy and understandable.
It also seems as if different communities are
taking care of each of these perspectives, i.e. the library community on the one
hand, and the records management and archives community on the other. This is a
general picture of course, which is not completely justified by practice. Apart
from that within these and other communities many different metadata sets or
standards exist, which make it even more complicated. One of the things
necessary is to map these sets and see how they can be connected. It adds
another meta-level, but it is an illusion to think that there will be one
common metadata set shared by all communities. The consequence is to identify
at what level the existing sets can communicate with each other and develop a
conceptual framework for it. An example
of such an initiative is the ABC-model that is being developed in the Harmony
project.[12]
It identifies a set of entities that is common in many metadata sets in
different domains and intends to provide a general logical model that describes
them and their interrelationships. These entities regard people, organisations,
places, events etc. The model focuses
on events and the basic idea behind it is that information resources can evolve
or transform over time by events, e.g. a translation into another language of
an information resource. That event then influences the description of the
resource, because one or more properties of the resource have changed. Events
are connected to agents, dates, places etc.
This approach is interesting because there is
a parallel to the creation of records. Records are the results of activities
carried out by agencies in doing business. A metadata model based on that
notion can be found in the SPIRT-model, as developed by Monash University. That
high-level model identifies three basic entities, agents, business and records,
that can have all kinds of relationships.[13]
The basic scheme that follows out of the
previous models and remarks is that people carry out activities or do business
which results in information resources (records or publications). This
perspective is taken especially by the SPIRT model. The perspective taken by
ABC-model is that information resources can or will be transformed by events,
carried out by agents. Despite these different viewpoints there is a strong
overlap in entities. And there is a third perspective, the viewpoint of the
researcher or user. The question asked by the user is mostly based on who did
what when, where and/or why? As such this question or part of it can easily be
related to information resource creating activities.
The following diagram shows at a high and
simplified level the relationships between the above mentioned entities or
elements:
Figuur 1 Basic entity model
What we need to know in order to be able to
fulfil the requirements of retrievability on the one hand and of interpretability
on the other hand can be identified as rather simple: who, what, when, where
and in some cases why. The ‘who did what why’ provides us with the information
about provenance and identity. At the level of the information sources itself
(publications, webpages, or records) metadata on their management (activities
such as appraisal, maintenance, description, access etc.), preservation and use
have to be captured. The elements of when and where or time and space are
applicable to the whole, because agents or organisations and activities
including their interrelationships will change over time.
A similar approach is for instance used in
the electronic resource citation (ERC).[14]
This citation idea is based on Dublin Core elements and intends to provide a
metadata kernel with a very simple format (who, what, when, and where), that
should support the permanence of network discoverable objects. The approach
though is rather static and does not take into account the dynamics of metadata
description.
Nonetheless there seems to be a common basic
scheme that can be used for different purposes. If we are able to build a model
around these elements, we will have a solid core set and the most important
needs can be satisfied. This can in principle be applied to all kinds of
information sources.
Conclusive remarks
The globalisation of the information world
has a strong impact on the way how we manage it. The emergence of the world
wide web requires new approaches and methods in order to enable easy access and
accessibility. Metadata play a key role in this. At the moment there is a
predominance of approaches from the library community. The tendency or even the
need, based on the globalising effects and the openness of the world wide web,
towards better co-ordination and collaboration between different information
providers and communities requires other attitudes in these communities. This
is especially in the archival community achieved rather slowly.
In order to be present, active and effective
in this new virtual world it is necessary to be aware of the characteristics of
it. In the area of metadata the world of information resource discovery has to
be better linked to the world of management and preservation of information
resources. This means that sets of metadata have to be mapped with each other,
but also that there has to be a better understanding of the different
perspectives that exist. Only then will it be possible to achieve the required
interoperability. As indicated there are some promising initiatives in this
respect.
One question in making information resources
accessible in a digital environment is, do we need metadata or should we make
use of the possibilities of IT or software to search the content of these
sources? Isn’t one of the big benefits of IT that computers made search on
content of documents possible, while before it was not? Obviously, looking at
what is happening at the moment as regards to all existing metadata initiatives
that seems not to be sufficient at all. The arguments used are the need for
reliability, interpretability and interoperability of information resources of
all kinds. In this respect the idea of automatic indexing is not relevant,
because it does not address these requirements. Moreover, this tool is
insufficient in order to deal with the different sets of words, the different
semantics, the inconsistency in the use of words etc. in information resources
and as such it does not contribute to or solve the issues mentioned. At the
most it may provide an additional help. The same goes for other tools as full
text retrieval or fuzzy logic tools.
Guidance is needed to find one’s way through
the dense forest of existing projects and initiatives around metadata in all
its forms, and to understand how they relate. In this paper I have tried to
identify and describe a possible common concept that could be a solid basis to
build on. This concept is in line with the needs of both the creation and the
use of information resources.
It is also clear that there are more needs to
be served than information discovery and more approaches possible or available
that may play a role on the scene of retrieving and managing information.
Especially one discipline may bring relevant and useful experience and
approaches to other communities and that is the archival community, which for
centuries has been and still is very familiar with managing, preserving and
making information sources accessible. Although common knowledge among records
managers and archivists, it becomes more and more obvious that outside this
specialist and small community not many people are aware of that.
So on the one hand there is a community that
focuses on Information resource discovery and is seeking for a common
instrument for making information resources retrievable and searchable by
establishing a limited set of tags. On the other hand there is the archival
community (including records management) that captures, organises and manages a
specific category of information, being created in the course of doing
business, called records.
They are complementary, and bring different
but relevant skills to the floor. Both perspectives are necessary to help
people to retrieve information easily, to assess what the information is about,
and whether they can trust it and interpret it. They meet in the domain of the
world wide web, but they still have to connect
properly, so synergy can be achieved from what they each are trying to
do. Co-ordination can be improved. The same goes for collaboration with
software suppliers that can provide useful tools based on the identified
requirements.
This paper I hope makes also clear that
adding metadata is not a useless burden, though it has to be cost-effective and
user-friendly. One could see metadata as the ‘Value Added Tax’ (VAT) of information.
It may be a costly thing and it may be experienced as a burden, but more
important it has or should certainly provide added value. So it would be better
to speak of metadata as ‘Value Adding Tags’. It is up to the specialists, both
information and IT, to make it easier e.g. by the use of IT.