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A Thought on "An Emergent Theory of Digital Library Metadata" Alemu, G. and Stevens, B. 2015- ISBN: 978-0-08-100385-5

I've been reading "An Emergent Theory of Digital Library Metadata: Enrich then filter".  I'm about 1/3rd of the way through, and so far I am convinced that libraries need to make it easier for patrons to add or suggest changes to metadata.  I'm convinced enough that I will add the functionally to my list of future directions for the collections I manage.  However, in light of the recent national conversation about fake news, I do question whether or not communities can effectively actively police incorrect content.  Wikipedia is used an example of how crowd generated information can work, but Wikipedia is also often the first search result in almost any search, meaning that it not only has a high chance to be seen, but also a high chance to be edited if it's wrong.  People online love correcting others.

The problem I see about applying that model to library metadata is that there is almost no way for library data to be as popular as Wikipedia, so it will have less chance of being viewed, less chance of being added to, and less chance of correction by the community.  It also has less of a chance of someone intentionally trying to mislead.

I was asked to consult on a digital project once where the goal was to scan the private papers of a philosopher.  The group wanted to scan the materials, but were reluctant to put the items up individually.  When I asked why, I expected them to say something to the effect of keeping the papers locked down to have patrons come visit the archive, but instead they said that they were concerned because the papers were very complicated, and read alone without context, a reader will get a very different idea of the intention of the writer than if the items were read with-in context.  I had never heard this argument before, but once it was in my mind, I ran across it again when we were scanning archival collections.  So, for example, an archival collection may have a Playboy in it, but the Playboy is not just a Playboy, but an example used by someone to make an argument for what is and isn't obscene (a real example my husband ran across recently).  So, for individual items that are in themselves information objects (like books, articles, pictures), this idea of folksonomies enriching the collection is a good one, but for items that require context, folksonomies actually increase the chance that an item will be isolated and described independently, which means the metadata moves further away from enrichment and closer to incorrect information (or at least incomplete).

One thing our digital library systems are not good at is giving digital items context.

So, as much as I am convinced that libraries do need to make metadata able to be edited, I also think it's as important for the community to fix the context problem.  Semantic web/linked data technologies have the possibility of fixing the problem, but I haven't seen linked data projects attempt this.

So, overall, good book with a good argument.  I think the result has implications for the future of digital library metadata and system development.

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