Meta Data Services

About: Meta Data Services is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2564 publications have been published within this topic receiving 40102 citations.

Rating quality in metadata harvesting

Abstract: The quality of the data and metadata affects the interoperability of the collections and the quality of all processing. Our metadata quality metric helps the metadata harvester collection administrators detecting and improving the weaknesses of their metadata, and harvesters locating the most problematic collections, in terms of metadata quality, and prompt their administrators to improve their metadata. We extended and used an adaptive quantitative metadata quality metric and a tool to implement it. In controlled values, their value distribution is considered, and in free text values the length of their description. Moreover, we also consider additional information in the OAI-PMH XML responces, that is not normally mapped in metadata elements, but still contains metadata information, such as XML attributes. We used the tool to make quality observations, to examine collections for patterns and irregularities and to produce the appropriate advice for the collection administrators. Some of these observations are demonstrated here. We compared the reported quality over a 3-year period, to get a general quantitative and qualitative feeling of the diversity in the record descriptions, and the changes in their quality during their lifetime. We verified the assumption that the quality increases over time: usually by a tiny amount, in every collection, and by a lot on a small number of collections. Also, the lower quality collections are the ones that stop responding and vanish.

Use of metadata to drive the interaction between database and expert systems

Abstract: Data as a resource in information processing environments is well known, but only recently has the computing community recognized the role of metadata, i.e. data about data. In particular, Data Dictionary Systems, (DDSs), whose main purpose is metadata management, are seen as essential for successful data processing. The artificial intelligence community also recognises this in meta knowledge. A system call Difead (Dictionary interface for expert systems and databases) is described that uses metadata stored in an active DDS to couple expert systems and databases. The prototype is being evaluated on an application that couples two medical expert systems with a relational clinical database.

Linkitup: Link Discovery for Research Data

Abstract: Linkitup is a Web-based dashboard for enrichment of research output published via industry grade data repository services. It takes metadata entered through Figshare.com and tries to find equivalent terms, categories, persons or entities on the Linked Data cloud and several Web 2.0 services. It extracts references from publications, and tries to find the corresponding Digital Object Identifier (DOI). Linkitup feeds the enriched metadata back as links to the original article in the repository, but also builds a RDF representation of the metadata that can be downloaded separately, or published as research output in its own right. In this paper, we compare Linkitup to the standard workflow of publishing linked data, and show that it significantly lowers the threshold for publishing linked research data.

Multimedia Semantics - The Role of Metadata

Abstract: This book gives an overview on fundamental issues within the field of multimedia metadata focusing on contextualized, ubiquitous, accessible and interoperable services on a higher semantic level. The book provides a selection of basic articles being a base for multimedia metadata research. Furthermore, it brings together experts from research and industry to present a view on the current state-of-the-art in recent research in Multimedia Semantics and the role of Metadata.

It's about Time!: Temporal Aspects of Metadata Management in the Work of Isabelle Boydens

Abstract: One of the principle emphases in Roy Harris’s writings on language and communication is the element of time in communicative action. According to Erik Hollnagel, one of the critical features of all work is the temporal dimension. Both the cognitive psychologist Dietrich Dörner and the professor of management Guy Callender found that a failure to consider temporal developments was characteristic of managers whose decision making produced catastrophic failures in simulated (Dörner) and real (Callender) situations. The temporal dimensions of database construction, management, and use have been a matter of frequent reflection on my part, but I have never pursued the issue in any depth (not enough time, perhaps). Nor do I recall running across any sustained discussion of the issue in the literature of library and information science during my searching over the past decade. Clearly my failure, as Isabelle Boydens’ 1999 book Informatique, normes et temps proves. My only excuse is that searching EBSCO’s Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts with Full Text, Wilson’s Library Literature and Information Science Retrospective, and LISA (CSA Illumina)—all of them—today (January 26, 2011) turns up not a single reference to Boydens.1 That is shocking, so shocking in fact that someone ought to find out what it is these databases are doing and why a prolific author like Boydens is not in any of them. Her book is in OCLC WorldCat, but only two U.S. libraries were listed as having copies. That is all the justification I need for this issue’s column, and indeed, for The International Observer column itself. Like Carlo Revelli’s work discussed in the last International Observer column, the number of Boydens’ publications and the length of Informatique, normes et temps presents just too much to go through in detail. At times the level of technical detail goes over my head, and at other times I had difficulty imagining how this would translate into cataloging practice (i.e., my world) as opposed to database management efforts by programmers (definitely not my world). Yet even in what were for me the heaviest sections of her monograph, the synthesis at the end of each chapter (a very