10/4 Reading Notes

Database

I found this article to be informative, because before reading this article I was not very familiar with the terminology used to describe the structure of databases.  Although I was aware of such databases as the Internet Movie Database and other online literary databases, the information provided for other specific databases lie Operational databases and Data warehouses seems to be essential information that could have future use.  I thought that the sections discussing the types and the models of databases were the most informative since I was not familiar with much of the terminology of the article. 

Setting the Stage

The importance of metadata is unfortunately not recognized by many outside of the academic community, although metadata provides necessary information about many subjects outside of academia.  The different kinds of metadata described within the article are examples how metadata is greatly important to society as a result of the tremendous increase of digital information within the last decade.  All of this information that has been created resulting from vast digital information output is maintained by metadata, even if the information itself is not truly important to some aspects of society.  Considering how important metadata is to maintaining digital information, there need to be new ways created to maintain the metadata itself as digital technology improves.  Metadata is something that needs to be recognized by much of society as being important to maintaining digital information, because it is essential to providing credibility to not only scholarly information, but also digital information that serves a useful purpose to society. 

An Overview of the Dublin Core Data Model

Projects such as the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative are crucial to the future of information preservation as digital technology develops.  Some of the issues that are discussed in the article, such as the clarification of vocabulary and internationalization are very important to the amelioration of databases and metadata as the amount of digital information increases.  Unfortunately, many students and other seekers of scholarly data are not able to obtain necessary scholarly information without searching for hours on online scholarly databases, or academic library databases.  Initiatives such as the DCMI need to be implemented and funded, so to maintain existing metadata, and to allow existing metadata to create easier access to scholarly information contained on academic databases.