Blog Post 3: Metadata and Databases
After reading chapters 4 and 5 in the Digital Humanities Coursebook, I have a better understanding of metadata, data description, and database design, which are all important elements to consider in a digital humanities project. Metadata, simply put, is data about data – all the information that can be descriptive, administrative, or operational for usage of the main data. As the textbook describes it, metadata is everything that can be listed under the ‘get info’ option on a digital platform. Descriptive metadata gives information about the data, like the caption of an image. Administrative metadata gives information on how and when the data should be or can be used. Operational metadata describes the necessary digital elements to correctly operate the data, like display factors and resolution. In short, metadata is just helpful information about the main set of data, but just like regular data, it must have standards for its terms and elements for it to be helpful between computers and humans.
Databases also must be organized and labeled carefully when dealing with humanities data. From my reading of the textbook, I understand that databases are a way of displaying and sorting multiple tables of data, making all fields easier to view and use. The connections in the tables of data make up the parameters of the database. Databases are a more effective and efficient way of relating and cross-referencing multiple tables of data, which is helpful in many aspects of digital humanities projects.
For my project, an analysis of the Blake Archive, I think that databases would be extremely useful when comparing the many tables of data that could be created from Blake’s work. In fact, the archive’s website constantly cross references different works according to their dates, material, content, and collection type. Metadata on Blake is also very important to the archive; when was this specific illustration digitized? Who digitized it? What resolution should I view the image in? Perhaps for administrative purposes, can this illustration be viewed by the public, or is it constricted to museum access only? Metadata can tell me a lot about the content in the Blake Archive. I think in future projects metadata and databases will be just as important as well. They serve a useful function in all digital humanities projects, as long as their ethical usage, significance, and consistencies and standards are considered and designed correctly. Staying organized is perhaps the most important aspect of a digital humanities project, because being able to understand and use the humanities data correctly makes the entire project worthwhile.
From Gabby: This blog post allows me to understand metadata and databases in simple terms. These chapters were understandable to me however, reading what others think and reflecting on the chapter allows me to feel more confident in what I’ve learned when reading through it the first time. Liza was helpful with keeping terms understandable and applying them to digital humanities projects. I like the way she described metadata as “data in data” queuing into the word ‘meta.’ Databases are useful in gaining more insight on data throughout a project. Like Liza said, for my project, databases can be useful in getting and comparing data from previous data on the archives of Emily Dickinson. There's information on the archives of Emily Dickinson and cross referencing data from previous editions and data collected that is listed in data tables from the project. Data is an important thing to keep track of on these projects when it comes to cross-referencing within databases.
ReplyDeleteA nice breakdown of both, particularly applying to the Blake Archive (what doesn't it do well?).
ReplyDelete