commission on cyberinfrastructure for the humanities and social sciences metadata as infrastructure,...

Commission on Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences

Metadata as Infrastructure, Interoperability, and the Larger Context

Michael Buckland,Emer. Prof., School of Information Management & Systems,

Co-Director, Electronic Cultural Atlas InitiativeUniversity of California, Berkeley

buckland@sims.berkeley.eduBerkeley, August 21, 2004.

Metadata as Infrastructure

Example: Moving between two media types, both digital.

Text

Social datasets

It is difficult to move between different kinds of document: e.g. Dataset of social statistics and passages of text.You cannot use text to search among numbers -- or numbers to search texts.

Text TOPIC LIST

Captions Social datasets

Different media types on the same topic can be linked indirectly via topical metadata, but in this case you need to specify place also.

Text TOPIC LIST

Maps GAZETTEER Captions Social datasets

Normalizing place names requires a gazetteer -- and latitude and longitude allow points on maps.But the time period is also needs to be specified . . .

Text TOPIC LIST

Maps GAZETTEER Captions Social datasets

TIME PERIOD DIRECTORY Timeline ChronologySo, normalize time terminology and calendar.

BIOG. DICT. Text TOPIC LIST

Maps GAZETTEER Captions Social datasets

TIME PERIOD DIRECTORY Timeline ChronologySimilarly with personal names . . . etc.

BIOG. DICT. 2 BIOG. DICT. TOPIC LIST 3

Text 2 TOPIC LIST 2Text TOPIC LIST

Maps GAZETTEER Captions Social GAZETTEER 2 etc datasets GAZETTEER 3

TIME PERIOD DIRECTORY Time line TIME PERIOD DIRECTORY 2 Chronology TIME PERIOD DIRECTORY 3 Metadata constitutes a form of infrastructure

Spatio-Temporal Interoperability Examples

Future Architecture

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Protocols, authentication, policy, instrumentation,Resource management, discovery, events, etc.

Storage, networks, computers, display devices, etc.and their associated local services

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Protocols, authentication, policy, instrumentation,Resource management, discovery, events, etc.

Storage, networks, computers, display devices, etc.and their associated local services