Friday, September 18, 2009

Weekly Readings .... Take 4!

Database

This is a typical Wikipedia article to me; tons of information, absolutely no structure. There is such a ridiculous amount of abbreviations that go unexplained, it really takes away from the article. I've probably heard of a couple of the abbreviations but not all of them. I got lost half way through the article trying to figure out what was referencing what and where it was explained. Regardless, I think I caught the gist of the article and figured out some of the intricacies of databases.

Metadata

The metadata article is put together better than the Wikipedia article but I still got lost in all of the information in it. Especially for the first article in a series, there is a ton of definitions thrown at you in a glorified introduction. I like the idea of adding charts and diagrams to try and make sense of all of the different forms of metadata and all of its variations. Who knew there was the much on metadata to talk about? After getting through the denser beginning part of the article, the "Primary Functions of Metadata, Some Little-Known Facts about Metadata, and Why Is Metadata Important?" sections help lift the fog quite a bit but there is still a lot to digest.

Dublin Core

All of these people that wrote and edited these articles must really like acronyms. I was fine with this article until I got to the "programming(?)" part talking about Michaelangelo being a painter and working on the Sistine Chapel. I understand the theory behind the DCMI, but I doubt I would be able to put it into practice. In theory, the DCMI sounds like a great idea to universally code things to make it easier to find whatever you are looking for. Then once you have found what you are looking for (easy Bono), the results will lead you to other similar things.


Muddiest Point(s)

There is a lot to chose from this week, but I am going to have to go with the DCMI and its structure. Like i said above, I get the theory, but I do not get all of the examples the article uses. I am going to assume that it is because I have absolutely no programming or coding in my background. I'll use their example. I know that Michaelangelo was a painter and worked on the Sisten Chapel. The more I look at it, I believe that the examples are supposed to build on one another and show how the DCMI will allow a system to make connections between information, but the coding language is completely foreign to me.

1 comment:

  1. I really like your assessment of the Wikipedia article (and I guess Wikipedia articles in general). Wikipedia articles try to stuff as munch information as possible into a single page website and often have very little to no structure, which makes them hard to understand. I did know most of the abbreviations but I can see how frustrating it would be if you didn't - and hence couldn't understand a lot of the article. For what is supposed to be an introductory article - it's not very introductory

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