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tom
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tom
Member since : Jul-02-2008 (Verified)
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Posted by tom 07/02/2008 07:00 AM GMT+00:00 We cannot achieve consistency, so if it is important then we are doomed to failure. Why can't we achieve consistency?
There are (say) 200 universities in the UK, and perhaps 20,000 worldwide, then there are subject repositories, project repositories, library and archive repositories and commercial repositories (which may be free or charged for or a mixture).
There are data repositories, image repositories, paper repositories etc.
All these repositories are set up for particular reasons and will want to achieve different things. What the BBC wants people to do with their's is very different to say NICE or the University of Wigan. They will, inevitably, have different collection policies, different ideas on appropriate metadata standards, different methods of accessing them (an image repository or data repository will require different affordances to a text repository).
To expect any form of consistency - of language, of policy, of metadata, of standards even of legal scope will simply not work.
Indeed, I would suggest that to achieve consistency we would require working in a closed community, and even then it would probably not work.
The alternative is to embrace inconsistency and work with that.
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tom
07/14/2008
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can you expand on that, because at the moment I dont understand
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tom
07/14/2008
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Possible benefits include:
the ability to store the information somewhere all parties to the work can get at it (may be important in collaborative research)
the ability to link it to other data more easily
version control
the ability to share it with particular people for comment / discussion
security (back ups by some one who will actually do them)
note that a repository is only one way of achieving this.
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tom
07/14/2008
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I guess that this is what we all want, because if repositories dont meet a real need for the user and fulfil it then there is little point inpursuing repositories.
BUT
That means identifiying a real need (not an ought), something that users feel that they are not currently achieving, and would like to. I have a suspicion that this might focus around the REF and the need to increase citations and have a way of reporting both output and impacts.
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tom
07/07/2008
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My point was really that we are not in a position to mandate, that many people will not follow any standards that are set, and if we set minimum requirements then we may exclude from what we are doing useful datasets that either dont know or dont care about what we are doing.
If that analysis is correct - and I believe that it is - then what we have to do is develop tools that are capapble of working with the inconsistent data and presenting it to the user as helpfully as possible. That is what I meant by embracing inconsistency.
I did some work on the RDN/LTSN Learning Object Metadata Application Profile (RLLOMAP) once upon a time, and people were not using it in the same way, or completing all the "mandatory" fields, so the question was what to do. I argued that we should make use of whatever information was available - essentially treat all fields as optional, and try to help the user. Yes, they may miss stuff because it was poorly catalogued, but they would definitely miss it if we rejected it because manadatory fields had not been completed.
Embrace inconsistency and develop methods to make the inconsistent as useful as possible to the end user.
Hope that helps.
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tom
07/02/2008
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And therein lies the problem - you cannot focus on such a wide group with competing, often contradictory views :(
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tom
07/02/2008
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We cannot achieve consistency, so if it is important then we are doomed to failure. Why can't we achieve consistency?
There are (say) 200 universities in the UK, and perhaps 20,000 worldwide, then there are subject repositories, project repositories, library and archive repositories and commercial repositories (which may be free or charged for or a mixture).
There are data repositories, image repositories, paper repositories etc.
All these repositories are set up for particular reasons and will want to achieve different things. What the BBC wants people to do with their's is very different to say NICE or the University of Wigan. They will, inevitably, have different collection policies, different ideas on appropriate metadata standards, different methods of accessing them (an image repository or data repository will require different affordances to a text repository).
To expect any form of consistency - of language, of policy, of metadata, of standards even of legal scope will simply not work.
Indeed, I would suggest that to achieve consistency we would require working in a closed community, and even then it would probably not work.
The alternative is to embrace inconsistency and work with that.
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tom
07/02/2008
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But who are the users?
Researchers?
Searchers?
Teachers?
Learners (aka students)?
Information specialists?
Depositors?
Retrievers (searchers / browsers)?
Humans?
Search engines?
etc..........
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