"boobs, boobs, boobs, boobs, boobs"

I have a great respect for my cataloging professor. At first I wasn't sure what I thought about him or his class, and even though I'm still deciding how I feel about the course content, I've decided about him.

It takes a very special person to make metadata schemas interesting (or even comprehensible) to people who don't actually care. Danny Joudrey is a very special person. How many people do you know who can lecture for three hours straight and still be excited about the topic even when most of their class is struggling to stay awake? His background in theater really shows through at this point. Frankly, I'm not sure why so many of my classmates have issues paying attention--the man is funny.

What really sets him apart, though, in my mind, and what has earned my respect is his vast knowledge on the subject. And not only does he have a deep resevoir of facts on metadata and the current state of inter-library debates over Dublin Core, MARC and XML, he can communicate all of this to us--essential laymen--in language that is understandable (well, most of the time). And he is clearly passionate about the topic, which will earn anyone points in my book. I am not quite ready to put him on a par with Bender, but he's getting pretty high up there on my list of people to admire (he's also almost mastered the names of everyone in class--and we're a big class--which is more than I can say for my own advisor, who I am also taking a class with this semester). Actually, if I were to compare him directly with anyone from USF, it would be Jeff Paul, who was our band director for only one year. I think they own the same enormous, grey, shapeless sweater.

All of this serves only as an introduction to a funny story about something he said in class yesterday. As you've no doubt guessed from the title of this post, it involved boobs. Well, not really. It's was actually about metadata, and why it doesn't work the way it should.

There is some background information you should all know in order to understand the context of the story. Our class discussion was on the Dublin Core metadata set, which is a simplified way to catalog electronic items for searching. The idea was that website creators would enter data into the 15 data elements (title, creator, description, etc.) and this metadata would be included in the code for the webpage, so that web searches could more effectively search for sites relating to search terms. Good idea, right? Only, people who create web pages don't seem to think like librarians and didn't see the point in spending time describing the sites they had just built. And occasionally, unscrupulous web developers would enter false data into the data elements, giving their site false hits with popular search terms. At this point, our professor thought it helpful to give an example:

"The data fields could just say, "boobs, boobs, boobs, boobs, boobs" and all the 12-year-old boys would go there." He then thought a moment, gave a short laugh and, turning slighly red, cupped his hand in his chin and continued. "Did I really just say 'boobs, boobs, boobs, boobs, boobs'? I don't even know that much about them."

I couldn't look at him for the next several minutes because I was trying very hard not to laugh out loud. My description cannot properly convey the humor of that moment, encapsulated not so much in what he said but in how he said it.

Who would have thought that cataloging could be do fun?

-Kim

Library Theory

Just so nobody gets the idea that I'm not doing any schoolwork out here just because I'm not writing about it, here's an excerpt of a post I had to make for my cataloging class. We were talking about metadata in class on Tuesday, and our assignment involved trying to tell someone else about it and reporting back on the experience. Here's the assignment "Ask a non-librarian friends or family member if they've ever heard of metadata. If they haven't, try to explain it to them and then blog about the experience. What was confusing to them? What was confusing to you? What made sense?" And this is my response:

I chose to talk to my friend Dianna about metadata. Even though she had never heard of the term, she was smart enough to guess at a definition for it based on her understanding of words like "metanarrative" (students in English programs tend to be pretty smart about word derivations). "Is it data about data?" she guessed.

That much was correct, but then we went further into the types of metadata and I got the chance to explain things to her that she couldn't just guess at. Even here, the logical definitions of what descriptive, administrative and structural metadata were used for made sense. (Dianna has worked at a library [but hadn't learned about metadata!], so she could envision the catalog record as we spoke and then connect each piece of information to a concrete image.

We really got into the good stuff when I explained about structural metadata, using the example from class about the digitized CD and a digital book. We both agreed that we're glad the computers understand that metadata so we don't have to.

The only real problem with this conversation is that I kept telling her things out of order and would end up telling her about an aspect of structural metadata, then return to administrative metadata so we could address the idea of meta-metadata. But somehow it all made sense. Maybe I didn't give her enough of the nitty-gritty complicated details, or maybe humanities students are just that intelligent.

The one real comment she had at the end was that she had never before realized that there was actual theory behind what librarians do (and a reason I need a Master's degree!). This was even more clear after I explained the basic concept of entities in FRBR.

It rambles a bit because I'm tired, but then, so did the conversation. If all of this just confuses you, call up Dianna and ask her to explain metadata to you--I'm done with that for tonight!

-Kim

PS--I am typing this post on a brand new keyboard! I ordered an external keyboard a few days ago so I could type more comfortably at my desk, and it arrived this afternoon! The mouse was shipped separately, so it's not here yet, which is making it more difficult to transition to using just the external keyboard. Since I still have to reach up to use the touchpad mouse, it's hard to fight the habit of reaching for the old keyboard after using the mouse. Still, my wrists and back will thank me for making the change.