Metadata

The MIT Press Essential Knowledge

by Jeffrey Pomerantz

Everything we need to know about metadata, the usually invisible infrastructure for information with which we interact every day. When “metadata” became breaking news, appearing in stories about surveillance by the National Security Agency, many members of the public encountered this once-obscure term from information science for the first time. Should people be reassured that the NSA was “only” collecting metadata about phone calls—information about the caller, the recipient, the time, the duration, the location—and not recordings of the conversations themselves? Or does phone call metadata reveal more than it seems? In this book, Jeffrey Pomerantz offers an accessible and concise introduction to metadata. In the era of ubiquitous computing, metadata has become infrastructural, like the electrical grid or the highway system. We interact with it or generate it every day. It is not, Pomerantz tell us, just “data about data.” It is a means by which the complexity of an object is represented in a simpler form. For example, the title, the author, and the cover art are metadata about a book. When metadata does its job well, it fades into the background; everyone (except perhaps the NSA) takes it for granted. Pomerantz explains what metadata is, and why it exists. He distinguishes among different types of metadata—descriptive, administrative, structural, preservation, and use—and examines different users and uses of each type. He discusses the technologies that make modern metadata possible, and he speculates about metadata's future. By the end of the book, readers will see metadata everywhere. Because, Pomerantz warns us, it's metadata's world, and we are just living in it.

Genres: Nonfiction, Technology, Science, Computer Science, Library Science, School, Grad School

254 pages, Paperback

First published October 30, 2015

About the author

Jeffrey Pomerantz is an information scientist. He was most recently Associate Professor in the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he developed and taught the MOOC “Metadata: Organizing and Discovering Information,” and a Visiting Professor at the University of Washington.

Reviews

[Travis Wagner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Necessary reading for anyone in the library and information sciences field. NECESSARY.

[Cell · Rating 2 out of 5]

給分低不是因為本書寫的爛，畢竟我沒有懂到能分出這本的好壞
只是因為我的吸收率奇差，讀完後沒有多懂些什麼
變成聽過都柏林核心集、語意網、文件物件模型、資源描述架構等名詞而已

目前讀了8本麻省理工出版社的 MIT Press Essential Knowledge 系列……好啦實際上是讀完4本棄了4本
才突然發覺到 Essential 不是指必備的知識
只是指這領域的精華，而這領域的知識有可能相當地冷僻
--
其他手頭上還沒讀的好幾本評價好差啊

[André · Rating 3 out of 5]

NOT JUST DATA ABOUT DATA

- "a statement about a potentially informative object"

- "a means by which the complexity of an object is represented in a simpler form" to the end of discovering things more easily

- proper terminology: distinguishes descriptive metadata, administrative-, preservation-, provenance metadata, use-, rights-, structural, meta-metadata

- some words on schemes, RDF, DTD, Dublin (Ohio) Core, schema.org, semantic web, thesauri and (3rd-party off-the-shelf) controlled vocabularies(!), ...

- technologically, not much new or surprising (to software developers)

- now and then interesting marginal comments on major organizations dealing with metadata (Getty, Library of Congress USA, ...); projects I had previously ignored (DBpedia)


Lacks IMHO inspirational examples of rather unconventional / non-obvious metadata and could have said more about inferences from metadata -- that is, all the clever and/or creepy things that can be done with metadata. Perhaps something like:

- reverse engineering a company from the online publication's metadata, or...

-"near repeats" in crime prediction, or...

- the discovery of encrypted malware in binaries on the basis of entropy differences, or discovering tax fraud on the basis of Benford's Law in forensic accounting, although both is data about data derived from the data itself, or perhaps...

- the average skin-conductance level at a city district (emotions metadata for urban planning and tourism), or simply...

- the yellow dots on your hardcopies to track down the printer, or...

- insurgents using cell phone geotags, or...

- mobile telcom call data records, Flickr photos, GPS-tags etc.
for urban planning or tracking waste, or...

- Stanford's MetaPhone study, or...

- tracking movement based on geolocated tweets

Nothing like that.

This book is primarly about traditional metadata (creator, created, modified, name, ...) and metadata networks -- surely the main case of application. Don't expect much talk about NSA/Intel.

I often saw real-world librarians giving good ratings on Goodreads. They are probably the primary target group of the book, not so much developers or civil rights activists, although developers may learn some differentiations and better technical terms. This book might also work for readers who never heard of metadata at all.

All books from the MIT Press' Essential Knowledge series are pocket books with a pleasant stiff and glossy softcover. The key statements are repeated every few pages in big white letters on a separate black book page to make content stick.

[James Townsend · Rating 4 out of 5]

The great thing about the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series that I always pitch to people is that it tends to cover topics that a lot of people think they understand, or at least understand enough, but if you read these expertly crafted books, you realize "Oh, I guess I didn't really know much about this at all. Wow." which is a very nice, humbling experience. Also you learn some useful info in the process!

This book was no exception. I would characterize it as mostly a discussion of metadata as it relates to various topics of conservation, library science, and the like. At times this was a bit dry, to be honest, but overall it was very interesting and made me really think about the systems that underpin my life, especially online. It also does talk a bit about the role of metadata in modern surveillance, etc. but not in a particularly central, let alone sensational way, though it does effectively drive home the point that collection of metadata is no small thing in any way.

Furthermore, the book does all of this in an extremely space efficient fashion and was a quick, fun read. Also, just a shoutout to MIT Press in general on this series--the layout and ergonomics of these books are GREAT. They're just a pleasure to read on a tactile, visual level. Try it, or other books in the series. (such as Paradox by Margaret Cuonzo, which was also awesome [side note: check out all the metadata I just employed in this review!])

[Martti · Rating 1 out of 5]

So, I judged a book by it's cover - which is not even shown correctly in Goodreads, fantastic work.

And it turned out it was a book about what it actually bluntly said on the cover. I guess I was overthinking it in the age of incredulous mass-surveillance who "only" look at your metadata. This book is not about that. Maybe couple of paragraphs.

What this book turned out to be about was librarians, library classification standards, ontology standards, schemas, XML and the whole history of that business. So yeah, a word of warning if anyone else is parsing books in the library... and of course a reminder for myself as well. Cover - don't judge!

[Nurganym · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although it took me a while to finish this book, it is in fact a fairly quick read. I would highly recommend it to anyone in Library School. It is especially good for those who are pondering upon the idea of specializing in technical services. This book would also be invaluable prior to taking a metadata class . The author covers the basics of metadata formats, provides some information about the description of digital and physical objects, as well as touches upon the history of semantic web and linked data. Overall, the book is well-written, and provides a good background knowledge in an accessible and fun way. Bonus: in the end you will find a list of resources for the further reading.

[Mary Elisabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had to read this for class. It gave me a great general overview of metadata, what it is, how it is used, and how it will continue to be used in the future. Even so, it was still a little over my head. I am, however, glad for what I learned from it, it will help me understand the rest of the metadata class I am currently in!

[Kerry Pickens · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is written for a beginner to understand data analysis, and the authors uses libraries’ book cataloging system as an analogy which most readers can relate to easily. I like that he uses Jewish references like reading from a Torah scroll as an example of how earlier texts were more difficult to collect data from. He explains how the use of electric information technology including cell phones and social engineering have provided a gateway to metadata, and the dangers of the government tracking citizens data.

[Aryssa · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the better textbooks I've been assigned.

[Annalise Kraines · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short, clear explanation of metadata. Surprisingly fun to read and makes metadata kind of exciting!

[Classic · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would say this is great, as it can be difficult to find introductory material related to Information and/or Library Studies!

[Shhhhh Ahhhhh · Rating 5 out of 5]

MIT Press is good at providing very solid primers. In this book, I learned a lot about metadata. It is actually impressive how much I didn't know about something that I interact with directly or indirectly and which shapes my technology experience, especially given that I'm a programmer. I was even familiar with some of the frameworks that were referenced by name in the text (xml) but didn't understand their significance.

Brief points:
-Metadata is data about data in a prescribed format agreeing with a particular standard
-Many standards exist and it is unlikely you'll have to create one to describe something. It's likely it exists already.
-Metadata is embedded in data objects and makes it easy for software to give us information about a wide array of objects without having to interact with them fully, especially in the case of very large data streams.
-Metadata is the future of all data.

[Julia Kulgavchuk · Rating 5 out of 5]

A concise and well-written book, coherent and rolling logically from the beginning to the end. Very informative and just enough dense, yet not at all dry.

There's this method, popular among non-fiction authors, to alternate theoretical parts with stories, where those theories are exemplified; it might be a strong method, but it got overused and patternized to the point that it's difficult to tell one book from another. I was happy to not see this pattern in Pomerantz' book. There are plenty of examples, but they are twined into the text in natural and non-banal way.

There are plenty of clear succinct definitions, explanations of concepts and connections between them. Pomerantz serves information in such a way that it settles nicely in the head and becomes knowledge.

[Eavan]

A good overview of metadata that I'd say is essential for MLIS students. Like all of the MIT Press books though, it does a poor job of explaining things for those not already a little versed in its world and is far too dry for such an interesting topic. Still a nice class-assigned book though 👍

[Mills College Library]

025.3 P785 2015

[V · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book got me an A on my exam, bless

[Kuang Ting · Rating 4 out of 5]

Metadata中文翻譯成後設資料或元數據，一種直接的解釋叫做"資料的資料"(data of data)。這本書的作者是一位北卡羅來納大學資料與圖書館學系的教授，他在這本書裡提供了metadata的入門介紹，讀者可以預期學會此概念的基礎知識，作者認為metadata應該是所有資訊學科的第一門課，只有理解了這個概念，才能掌握進階的資訊知識。

如果圖書館學系有開通識課的話，這本書應該會是指定教材，因為內容完全就跟圖書館的分類息息相關。我第一次閱讀這種主題的書，metadata的概念以白話來說就是"如何分類資料"。如果你愛去圖書館，應該都會留意到杜威分類法這個詞彙，它是一種圖書館愛用的圖書分類法，例如"論語"這本書應該可能被分類成[中國文學-->古典文學-->經典文學]，人類的知識浩繁，妥善的分門別類，才能正確的引導研究者取得準確的資料。假使沒有這種分類方法，全部的書隨便堆疊，我如果要在數十萬本書中找到論語，就得一本一本慢慢找，搞不好找了一個星期還沒結果。圖書館學的意義就是幫忙整理和歸納人類產生的各種資訊，這也是metadata的精髓。

人類自從文明初始就已經開始尋找分門別類的最佳方法了，經過幾千年的發展，已經有了一套處理資訊的方式。不過人類產生的資訊量隨著電腦的發明而指數型增長，讓資訊分類變得越來越複雜。為了因應這種棘手的局面，資訊專家提出了多種解決的方法，試著統整零散的資訊，而這種趨勢依然是現在進行式，畢竟要賦予如此海量的資料一個框架，絕對不容易。

這本書就是介紹了資料分類的概念。metadata就是以一組新資料來解釋原本的資料。舉個例子，這本書的作者是傑弗瑞，出版社是MIT Press，出版於2015年11月。這三組資訊(作者、出版社、出版日期)就是這本書的metadata。有點類似於關鍵字的感覺，我如果在一個資料庫想要找到這本書，我總得輸入某些東西才能找到它，假如沒有metadata，我根本無從下手。

不過這就衍生了一個問題，metadata的定義是什麼呢? 如果它可以被隨便定義，那結果會變得很混亂。舉個例子，這本書一般會被分類在"資訊科學"底下，如果能夠隨意設定這本書的metadata，我或許可以把這本書歸類成"我肚子好餓"。這樣一來，在資料庫搜尋"資料科學"反而找不到這本書，反而隨便輸入"我肚子好餓"就會跑出來。你甚至可以質問，我怎麼知道要輸入"我肚子好餓"呢? 答案是你不會知道。

所以囉，metadata是有標準版本和格式的。只有遵循規則，metadata才能讓資訊分類恰如其分。整本書就是在介紹這些規則和原理，有一些概念實在太抽象，又侷限於篇幅無法詳細解釋，我覺得有些細節讀過後會覺得似懂非懂，不過大方向的掌握倒是沒問題。閱讀MIT Essential Knowledge Series真的是大開眼界，每個領域都好有趣，而且會不斷發現從來沒有想像過的事物，以本書來說，我從來沒想過"資訊分類"這檔事都能如此奧妙。

最後紀錄一下一個特別的觀點，我不知道有多少人聽過"Getty Image"這間公司，以後你注意看，幾乎所有的媒體或企業使用的圖片來源都會顯示Getty Image。這本書終於解開一個縈繞已久的疑惑，Getty Image到底是何方神聖呢? 原來它是metadata的重量級機構之一，特別是影像和藝術創作的後設資料。Metadata無所不在，只是隱身於幕後而我們沒有察覺。這本書能給予你一種觀看和理解整個世界的深層視角，這種感受太過抽象，讀了才會懂它的意思。

[Anthony O'Connor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent

A great short intro to metadata. Which the author quickly explains is not ‘data about data’, a trite and useless formulation. The author does give a solid definition and breaks it down into the various types. There is much discussion about the structure and composition of objects and information objects and possible relationships and interactions. Applications thereof. Always intriguing. Especially the chapter on the semantic web. The best thing about this short work is some highly detailed descriptions of many of the metadata standards that exist, their defining authorities, and intended scope. It’s all much more highly developed and potentially ‘standardisable’ than I was aware. He does though make the usual lament that the nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them. Not sure who said it first. It’s been attributed to many sources. And always oh so true.

[Roger Whitson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pomerantz's METADATA is a fairly clear explanation of what constitutes metadata, how web services use metadata, how it is structured, and it's future political implications. I found the first two chapters - on definitions and descriptive metadata - to be dry and almost too technical. It's almost as if Pomerantz wants to be exhaustive about what metadata is before he shows us what it can do. But once he starts talking about APIs, linked data, and the NSA, the purpose and importance of the book quickly comes into focus.

[Victoria Yang · Rating 3 out of 5]

From skimming the other reviews of this book, it looks like I am one of many library students who has been assigned it for a course. While I am not particularly hyped about metadata as a topic to read about, Pomerantz gave his best shot in making the subject light, brief, and interesting, and the ~aesthetic~ formatting of this book can be praised. Read this book if you have to read a book on metadata, I suppose.

[Kieran Wood · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book does a good job of building a mental model and chronology of how to view metadata. My only gripe is that it feels like it left a ton on the table in terms of depth. While it was illuminating for me, I feel that more seasoned developers wouldn't get a ton out of the content other than some good moral theory points raised about the importance of metadata and it's manifestations in the real world.

[Duy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Audiobook ngắn về Metadata. Metadata có thể được dịch là Siêu dữ liệu, là dữ liệu nói về các dữ liệu khác. Ví dụ, một tấm ảnh chụp bằng máy ảnh hay điện thoại có dữ liệu chính là tấm ảnh, và có rất nhiều metadata khác như ngày chụp, vị trí, độ phân giải, khẩu độ, thời gian phơi sáng.... Cuốn này viết tạm được.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Required for my metadata class and for anyone pursuing a degree/career in information and library sciences, or data programming, analysis, or management. VERY dry at times, requiring re-reading at others, but generally easy to understand and with good analogies and references to help the reader learn the material.

[Harrison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this as a textbook for a metadata class. It’s useful, concise, and fairly graspable as an introduction to such a technical subject. But at the end of the day it’s a book about a digital technology, and the gap between understanding this overview and being able to apply it to the insane amount of schemas and applications that exist is too wide for me to be totally at peace recommending it.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the most accessible introductions to metadata I've read. This is not a book for the library or information professional, but for students and others who are just beginning to delve into the topic. A good resource for undergraduate students.

[Emily Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I took metadata in grad school, I finished without ever actually understanding the semantic web or linked data. I read this book as a refresher before an interview, and feel like now I could probably explain them.

[Chloe Noland · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really informative, compact book about metadata and all its manifestations and insidious (or generic) uses. It's the kind of thing that would've been useful to read at the beginning of my MLIS, not at the end, but still a good refresher! <3 <3

[Danielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this for class and found it to be a good accessible overview of a subject that can feel way over my head at times. Some of the examples are a little dated, but the main ideas are pretty solid. Interesting to see some of the other titles in this series.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good introduction.

[Yaso · Rating 4 out of 5]

A simple explanation about metadata.