{"id":1461,"date":"2010-12-09T13:49:10","date_gmt":"2010-12-09T13:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/?p=1461"},"modified":"2011-12-31T13:35:19","modified_gmt":"2011-12-31T13:35:19","slug":"lets-link-the-worlds-metadata","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/2010\/12\/09\/lets-link-the-worlds-metadata\/","title":{"rendered":"Let&#8217;s link the world&#8217;s metadata!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Together we can continue building a global metadata infrastructure. I am tasking you with helping. How can you do that?<\/p>\n<p>For evangelists, practitioners, and consultants:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Thanks for bringing Linked Data to <a href=\"http:\/\/richard.cyganiak.de\/2007\/10\/lod\/\">where it is today<\/a>! We&#8217;re counting on you for even more yummy cross-disciplinary Linked Data!<\/li>\n<li>What tools and applications are most urgently needed? Researchers and developers need to hear your use cases: please partner with them to share these needs!<\/li>\n<li>How do you and your clients choose [terms, concepts, schemas, ontologies]? What helps the most?<\/li>\n<li>Overall, what is working (and what is not)? How can we amplify what *is* working?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For Semantic Web researchers:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Build out the trust and provenance infrastructure.<\/li>\n<li>Mature the query languages (e.g. SPARQL) [perhaps someone could say more about what this would mean?]<\/li>\n<li>Building tools and applications for end-users is really important: value this work, and get to know some real usecases and end-users!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For information scientists:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>How can we identify &#8216;universals&#8217; across languages, disciplines, and cultures? Does the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iskoi.org\/doc\/colon.htm\">Colon classification<\/a> help?<\/li>\n<li>What are the best practices for sharing and reusing [terms, concepts, schemas, ontologies]? What is working and what is failing with metadata registries? What are the alternatives?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For managers, project leaders, and business people:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>How do we create and justify the business case for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oclc.org\/research\/activities\/termservices\/default.htm\">Terminology services<\/a> [like MIME types, library subject headings,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/2008\/10\/23\/nytimes-topics-quirky-useful-classification-finding-aid\/\">New York Times Topics<\/a>]?<\/li>\n<li>Please collect and share your usage data! Do we need infrastructure for sharing usage data?<\/li>\n<li>Share the economic and business successes of Linked Data!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That ends the call to action, but here&#8217;s where it comes from.<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday Stuart Weibel gave a talk called\u00a0&#8220;Missing Pieces in the\u00a0Global Metadata Landscape&#8221; [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/stuartweibel\/missing-pieces-intheglobalmetadatalandscap\">slideshare<\/a>] at InfoCom International Symposium in\u00a0Tokyo. Stu asked 11 of us what those missing pieces were&mdash;with 3 questions: the conceptual issues, organizational impediments, and the most important overall issue. This last question, &#8220;What is the most important missing infrastructural link in establishing globally interoperable metadata systems?&#8221;,\u00a0is my favorite, so I&#8217;ll talk about it a little further.<\/p>\n<p>Stu summarizes that the infrastructure is mostly there, but that broad adoption (of standards, conventions, and common practice) is key. Overall these are the key issues he reports:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Tools to support and encourage the reuse of terms, concepts, schemas, ontologies (e.g., metadata registries, and more)<\/li>\n<li>Widespread, cross-disciplinary adoption of a common metadata approach (Linked Data)<\/li>\n<li>Query languages for the open web (SPARQL) are not fully mature<\/li>\n<li>Trust and provenance infrastructure<\/li>\n<li>Nothing&#8217;s missing&#8230; just use RDF, Linked Data, and the open web.\u00a0 The key is broad adoption, and that requires better tools and applications. It&#8217;s a social problem, not a technical problem.<\/li>\n<li>The ability to identify &#8216;universals&#8217; across languages, disciplines, and cultures &#8211; revive <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iskoi.org\/doc\/colon.htm\">Ranganathan&#8217;s facets<\/a>?<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.oclc.org\/research\/activities\/termservices\/default.htm\">Terminology services<\/a> [like MIME types, library subject headings, <a href=\"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/2008\/10\/23\/nytimes-topics-quirky-useful-classification-finding-aid\/\">New York Times Topics<\/a>] have long been proposed as important services, but they are expensive to create, curate, and manage, and the economic models are weak<\/li>\n<li>Stuff that does not work is often obvious. We need usage data to see what does work, and amplify it<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>You may notice, now, that the &#8220;call&#8221; looks a little familiar!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Together we can continue building a global metadata infrastructure. I am tasking you with helping. How can you do that? For evangelists, practitioners, and consultants: Thanks for bringing Linked Data to where it is today! We&#8217;re counting on you for even more yummy cross-disciplinary Linked Data! What tools and applications are most urgently needed? Researchers [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[85,64,176],"tags":[82,312,152,311],"class_list":["post-1461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-information-ecosystem","category-library-and-information-science","category-semantic-web","tag-business-models","tag-linked-open-data","tag-metadata","tag-metadata-infrastructure"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1461"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2143,"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1461\/revisions\/2143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jodischneider.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}