PRE or CO-REQUISITES:
MAS students: Completion of the MAS Core courses, plus permission of the instructor.
MLIS and Dual students: Some electives can be taken in conjunction with the MLIS Core courses; consult with the MLIS Program Chair for recommendations.
Goal: This course will give students a broad introduction to descriptive, structural, administrative, and use metadata covering metadata collection and generation, schema design and revision, and querying and analysis. This course will have a substantial practice component through lab sessions. Labs in this course will focus on the management of metadata within digital repository environments while class lectures and student research will cover a range of standards, applications, and contexts.
LEARNING OUTCOMES:
Upon completion of this course students will be able to:
- Apply theories of information and documents to describe items, collections, and datasets through metadata; [1.2]*
- Describe existing metadata standards in terms of scope, application, governance, and maintenance; [1.1]
- Understand the role that metadata plays in libraries, archives, and record management; [1.1, 1.4]
- Analyze and assess proposed and deployed metadata schemas for suitability, feasibility, and risk; [1.1]
- Design metadata schemas and application profiles around particular resources and contexts; [1.1,1.3]
- Manage metadata schemas and metadata records within a digital repository environment; [1.2]
- Express metadata in linked open data triples; [1.2]
- Query and analyze metadata datasets to assess collections and find relationships; [1.2]
- Assess and compare metadata models across various platforms; [1.1, 1.4]
- Understand critical perspectives on metadata including bias, labour, surveillance, and professionalization; [1.4, 4.1]
- Communicate the relevance of metadata principles and practices to real world situations; [1.3, 2.1]
- Create and follow through on plans for professional development and practice in the domain of metadata that are accountable to the philosophy, principles and ethics of the professions. [5.1, 5.3]
* Learning outcomes are stated in terms of student learning outcomes and reference the iSchool Statement on Graduate Competencies.
CONTENT:
- Metadata for items, collections/fonds, and datasets
- Metadata in library, archival institutional, and record management professional contexts
- Metadata functions:
- Access
- Control
- Authentication
- Description
- Preservation
- Relationships
- Monitoring & Surveillance
- Metadata generation & collection
- Traditional processes
- Automated processes
- Crowd processes
- Metadata principles:
- Entities, attributes, and relations
- Structures & encoding
- Interoperability, extensibility, modularity, & hospitality
- Schema design & revision and application profiles
- Standards: URI, DC, XML, RDF, MODS, EAD, Schema.org & more!
- Open and linked metadata & triples
- Normalizing, translating, & transforming metadata
- Querying & analyzing metadata records
- Sustainability and long-term issues
- Labour & accountability in metadata