Metadata

by Jeffrey Pomerantz Narrated by Steven Menasche

Overview

When "metadata" became breaking news, appearing in stories about surveillance by the National Security Agency, many members of the public encountered this once-obscure term from information science for the first time. Should people be reassured that the NSA was "only" collecting metadata about phone calls -- information about the caller, the recipient, the time, the duration, the location -- and not recordings of the conversations themselves? Or does phone call metadata reveal more than it seems? In this book, Jeffrey Pomerantz offers an accessible and concise introduction to metadata. In the era of ubiquitous computing, metadata has become infrastructural, like the electrical grid or the highway system. We interact with it or generate it every day. It is not, Pomerantz tell us, just "data about data." It is a means by which the complexity of an object is represented in a simpler form. For example, the title, the author, and the cover art are metadata about a book. When metadata does its job well, it fades into the background; everyone (except perhaps the NSA) takes it for granted. Pomerantz explains what metadata is, and why it exists. He distinguishes among different types of metadata -- descriptive, administrative, structural, preservation, and use -- and examines different users and uses of each type. He discusses the technologies that make modern metadata possible, and he speculates about metadata's future. By the end of the book, readers will see metadata everywhere. Because, Pomerantz warns us, it's metadata's world, and we are just living in it.

Editorial Reviews

Library Journal

02/01/2016
Pomerantz (information scientist, Univ. of Washington, Seattle) provides a short yet broad treatment on the foundations of library and information science. His work focuses particularly on the pillars of description and markup, and how these help drive the systemwide data storage, data collection, and mass-data retrieval underpinning people's digitally driven lives. Chapters cover the ways in which metadata are constructed and used, including descriptive, administrative, and use metadata. A beneficial illustrative example on the structure of data is presented in the section "Enabling Technologies for Metadata," particularly spanning XML and its key features for making a range of metadata uses and creation possible. Later chapters delve into the semantic Web and network analysis, particularly in the social domain. What this book especially excels at is addressing an array of topics in a concise and accessible manner. VERDICT Recommended for students and scholars within library and information science fields and those looking to learn more about the profession.—Jim Hahn, Univ. Lib., Univ. of Illinois, Urbana

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169969665
Publisher:	Ascent Audio
Publication date:	11/01/2015
Series:	Mit Press Essential Knowledge
Edition description:	Unabridged

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