> On 30 May 2015, at 16:41, Mia <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> If collections systems can export structured data for aggregation then it doesn't matter if Mike doesn't understand it :)
But the people writing the systems (like Mike) do need to understand it.
Mapping data from one data-set to another for aggregation is very simple when everyone agrees on what each piece of data equates to, but the more complex the system becomes, aggregating it gets harder and harder, and ultimately only the common points of data can be aggregated, which means any over-arching system has less data than the individual collections.
I think the issue is clear - every collection has nuances and needs special and niche descriptive metadata, but that needs to be on top of a common core, and it’s the common core that I was hoping to detect. I’m not a metadata expert, but I have built collection systems and my experience has been that the more nuanced the system, the less useful it becomes - a simple controlled vocabulary for describing objects makes searching more effective and the fewer fixed points of metadata the faster the indexes can be.
So I suppose my question is this - which metadata standard is in use (at least at a base level) in the largest number of active collections systems?
Dublin Core is well defined and simple to implement, but how popular is it?
Where would I go to find out?
:o)
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