Records Management Program <[log in to unmask]> wrote on 10/26/2007
03:24:56 PM:

> > If metadata tags consist of categories such as genre, artist, beats per
> minute - or anything else - what's the difference of that type of system
> and a file classification system - other than one is laid out
> hierarchically, and the other utilizes metadata tags? Don't both still
> use searchable key words of some kind? Doesn't the necessity of
> assigning a value to the item in question still exist? It doesn't appear
> to me that there is a lot of difference here because the key challenge
> is.... the act of assigning a value to the item in question. While I'm
> sure I could download metadata to describe my wife's Partridge Family
> collection (I know a bucket I'd like to throw that stuff into....) I'm
> not sure if there is a records site that can automatically download
> metadata tags to that report I recently wrote at work.

Maybe not everything, but as you log in to your portal in the morning the
stuff you work on can be tagged with your name, and maybe even the role you
were playing when you interacted with it (Creator, reviewer, Approver). If
you've got some ERP solution you can maybe even tie your documents to
specific business processes. To be sure we're not there yet, but we seem to
be headed in that direction - though I admit I may be hopelessly
optimistic.

>
> Also, what one person calls things in their big bucket may not be what
> someone else calls stuff. For example, I would probably call anything by
> KC and the Sunshine Band "INFUWCSCNY (Insufferable Noise Foisted on an
> Undeserving World Coming Soon to the Casino Nearest You)" while others
> might call it "Disco" or even "Nostalgia", yet my collection of Frank
> Zappa would be found under "Genius" while others might call it "MSWRKDB
> (Music Significantly Worse than Road Kill with Dirty Bits)". What if we
> start sharing buckets? Someone may say tomato and I may say red round
> vegetable (or is it a fruit?).... Is a controlled vocabulary
> unnecessary? If you gave your metadata driven machine to someone else,
> would it make any sense to them?
>
I'm not sure that's a problem - isn't that the approach of "folksonomy"
that as people use information and start tagging it for their personal use,
value is added in unknown ways. Going back to the early days of music file
sharing, I discovered lots of cool stuff by finding like minded users and
relying on their classifications to find stuff that I in turn valued. I
suppose at some point you run the risk of information overload, and
something will fall through the cracks - but I'm not so sure those flaws
are any worse than the one's we experience today when things are
misclassified, or placed in the wrong bucket.

List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html
Contact [log in to unmask] for assistance
To unsubscribe from this list, click the below link. If not already present, place UNSUBSCRIBE RECMGMT-L or UNSUB RECMGMT-L in the body of the message.
mailto:[log in to unmask]