Fall 2020
Online Class

INLS 720-01W

INLS 720 General Syllabus

Instructor: Cliff Missen
E-Mail: cliff@unc.edu
School of Information and Library Science
UNC-Chapel Hill

An enduring goal of the information professions is to enable precise, reliable, comprehensive retrieval of data and documents. A key means to achieving this goal has been the design and application of systems for structured description—metadata. Consistent, correct, and well-formed metadata, the thinking goes, facilitates access to diverse information resources, making them more discoverable to potential users.

To facilitate retrieval across collections and enable federated information aggregations, such as WorldCat, Europeana, and the Digital Library of America (DPLA), metadata needs to be interoperable across systems. Interoperability means that metadata created for one system can work in another system. For example, if one system describes authors and titles of resources in a coordinated statement (“Hamlet by William Shakespeare”) and another separates authors and titles into distinct metadata elements, then author and title information is not easily interoperable between the systems. One system’s records would need to be mapped to the other system’s structure before they could be aggregated.

There are a number of different levels of interoperability. Syntactic interoperability has to do with data encodings and formats. For example, are dates written like this: August 12, 2019 or like this 08/12/2019 or like this 12/08/2019? Is the metadata record encoded as an XML file or in the MARC format? Semantic interoperability has to do with meaning. What kind of content should be in a metadata element titled Subject? (How specific and exhaustive should a subject term be? Should terms be chosen from a controlled vocabulary? Are metadata creators applying subject terms in the same way, so that they carry the same meaning from record to record?) 

In this course, we will review the fundamental concepts central to structured metadata implementations and survey the many types of standards that attempt to harmonize description and enable interoperable systems. We will engage these concepts in action by examining the metadata-related efforts of two communities with different interests in similar sorts of resources: museums and archeology. 

Learning Objectives

At the end of this course, you will be able to:

• Identify, define, and disambiguate fundamental concepts of metadata architectures, such as entities, attributes, and relations.
• Compare and relate different types of standards (for example, content standards, structure standards, and encoding standards) and describe the role of intersecting standards in facilitating metadata interoperability.
•  Describe the relationship between metadata standards in a domain (such as museums or archeological research) and the information needs of users as articulated by that domain.
•  Identify, characterize, and assess the interpretive diversity in a dataset created to align with metadata standards. 
• Describe and defend a principled position to inform the design, implementation, and use of metadata standards that accounts for inevitable interpretive diversity in metadata environments

Course Structure

Course content is organized into three primary sections:

• Metadata basics.
• Metadata standards.
• Domain-specific metadata. 

In the Metadata Basics section, we will review fundamental concepts of resource description, including entities, attributes of entities, and relations between entities. Although our focus here will be to understand the general concepts that make up metadata architectures, we will make use of several common standards (such as Dublin Core and Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records, or FRBR) to do so.  

In the Metadata Standards section, we will survey the many types of standards employed in research description and understand how these standards relate to each other. In this section, we will have a brief introduction to linked data, a technical architecture that enables automated aggregation of metadata statements.  

In the Domain-Specific Metadata section, we will look at two domains with different interests in (potentially) similar resources: museums and archeology. First, we will seek to understand the conceptual foundations of museum informatics: how have the goals and objectives of resource description been articulated in museums? Then we will survey some of the metadata standards developed for museums, focusing on the conceptual challenges that these standards are attempting to systematize. In the final weeks of the course, we’ll look at resource description and standardization efforts in archeological data, a domain that has some crossover with museums in terms of the entities of interest, but that takes a different perspective on those entities.

Course Requirements

• Discussion participation – 40 points

• 3 Virtual presentations – 30 points (10 points each)

• Final Exam – 30 points 

Grading

Based on current UNC grading scales, the following grades and corresponding numeric ranges are applicable:

 *Definitions are from: http://registrar.unc.edu/academic-services/grades/explanation-of-grading-system

Late Work & Extension

Late work: If you submit an assignment late there is a 10% point penalty.

Extensions: Depending on circumstances and the date requested, extensions will be granted at the discretion of the instructor. If you anticipate needing an extension, please set up a meeting to discuss it as soon as possible. Asking for extensions at the last minute will not be regarded with welcome except for extreme circumstances.

Assignments & Assessments

Materials. All materials can be found in Sakai. The course syllabus, schedule, slides, videos, assignments, and other resources will be there.  Video & Slides will be released every Tuesday

Readings. A list of readings, organized in recommended order is provided for each class. Readings should be completed prior to the beginning of each week so you are prepared to engage in class discussion.

Discussion. We will be using the discussion forum as the main form of course interaction. You are expected to visit the course site at least 2-3 days out of each week (the instructor will be monitoring the forum daily) to post your responses to discussion prompts and to offer thoughtful replies to your classmates’ posts. We will use the forum for formal discussions of weekly readings, your individual assignments (see below) and to informally discuss any topics/issues that come up during the course. The course is short in duration, so your active engagement in forum discussions is the best way to get the most out of the course!

Three Virtual Presentations. The purpose of these assignments is to allow students to explore a topic of their choice in more detail for each module and to share the results with classmates. You are required to provide a short report in the form of a slide presentation (10 slides) on a topic relevant to each of the 3 course modules (Metadata basics; Metadata standards; Domain-specific standards). A list of suggested topics will be provided in the Resources section of the course site but feel free to choose other topics of interest (pending instructor approval). The presentations should be based on scholarly information sources (make sure to include a proper list of references). Try to use non-textual materials in your presentation (online videos or examples, tables, charts, diagrams) as a way to synthesize and present the key ideas and themes. If some text is necessary, please limit it to very short paragraphs and bulleted lists. Please include voice narration with your presentation. All presentations will be posted on the course website for comments from other class participants. The author is expected to respond to any questions posted by classmates.

Course Communication

Email. Email is the best way to contact me. I try to reply to student emails within 48 hours, there are times that it may take me 2-3 days to reply.

Course announcements. Announcements will be posted on Sakai. Announcements may include information about the week's work, or other timely information.

Messages. I may use the Sakai message tool to send individual messages to you; I may also copy the message to your email address. You can also use the Salai message tool to send a message to me.

Course Acknowledgements

The design, materials, and implementation of this version of INLS 720 is the product of a collaborative effort of SILS instructors: Melanie Feinberg, Grace Shin, and myself.