Content Management: Challenges and Strategies

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Content Management Challenges and Strategies

• Bob Boiko
• UW iSchoolischool.washington.edu
• Metatorial Services Inc. www.metatorial.com

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Bob Boiko

• Teacher
• iSchool, University of Washington
• The iSchool CMS Curriculum
• The iSchool CMS Evaluation Lab
• Author
• CM Bible
• Consultant
• Boeing, Motorola, Microsoft
• Founder
• Chase Bobko
• Metatorial Services
• Developer
• Database and XML systems

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The Word Metadata

• Meta
• About
• After
• Metadata
• Data about data
• Other stuff apart from the data that helps you
  make use of it

Achilles Tell me, Mr. Genie what is a
meta-wish? Genie It's simply a wish about
wishes. I am not allowed to grant meta-wishes.
It's only in my purview to grant plain ordinary
wishes, such as wishing for ten bottles of beer,
to have Helen of Troy on a blanket, or to have an
all-expense-paid weekend for two at the
Copacabana. You know simple things like that.
But meta-wishes I cannot grant, GOD won't permit
me to.
Douglas Hofstadter Gödel, Escher, Bach
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Metadata The Narrow and Wide Sense

• The Narrow sense
• A fancy file system with much more than the usual
  title, size, and date
• The basis of file, asset, and document management
• The broad view
• Not about whole files
• Any information that describes or contexts
• All the names we come up with to encapsulate and
  divide info in order to understand and use it

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Metadata The Practical Sense

• Represented in databases
• Tables
• Fields
• Values
• Represented in XML
• Elements
• Attributes
• Values

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Metadata My Favorite Sense

• The Genie is a Djin
• GOD stands for GOD Over Djin
• Which stands for GOD Over Djin Over Djin
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• Which stands for GOD Over Djin Over Djin Over
  Djin Over Djin
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• Which stands for GOD Over Djin Over Djin Over
  Djin Over Djin Over Djin Over Djin
• Which stands for GOD Over Djin Over Djin Over
  Djin Over Djin Over Djin Over Djin Over Djin
• Which stands for GOD Over Djin Over Djin Over
  Djin Over Djin Over Djin Over Djin Over Djin Over
  Djin
• Which stands for GOD Over Djin Over Djin Over
  Djin Over Djin Over Djin Over Djin Over Djin Over
  Djin Over Djin
• Which stands for GOD Over Djin Over Djin Over
  Djin Over Djin Over Djin Over Djin Over Djin Over
  Djin Over Djin Over Djin
• Which stands for GOD Over Djin Over Djin Over
  Djin Over Djin Over Djin Over Djin Over Djin Over
  Djin Over Djin Over Djin Over Djin
• Which stands for GOD Over Djin Over Djin Over
  Djin Over Djin Over Djin Over Djin Over Djin Over
  Djin Over Djin Over Djin Over Djin Over Djin

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What is Metadata For?

• Identify
• Manage
• Describe
• You want to track and administer
• They want to discover and use

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The Metadata Ladder

• No solid identification
• A name
• No unique Id!
• Minimal management
• Create, modify date
• Size
• Attributes (read only, etc.)
• No description

The File
What computers have been built on A Convenient
container
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The Metadata Ladder

• Resources identified
• Id, Title
• Resources managed
• Type, Format
• Source, Author, Rights
• Language
• Resources described
• Audience
• Subject
• Description
• Coverage

What is it?
A File
The file System you wish you had
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Enter Dublin Core

• Standard wrapper for a resource
• Rich description
• Most widely recognized
• Hardly yet used!
• Still shifting
• General enough to be useful and useless

www.dublincore.org
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The Metadata Ladder

• Items identified
• By their URL (URI)
• Items managed
• By their resource metadata
• By their relations
• All items described
• By their resource metadata
• By their relations

What is it?
What is it?
A File
The Intranet you wish you had An expanding
network of connections and meaning
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Enter RDF

• Standard way of representing a relationship
• Inherently recursive
• Hints at meaning
• Subject - predicate object

Liz
Lin
http//www.xml.com/lpt/a/2001/01/24/rdf.html
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The Metadata Ladder
What is it?
The style sheet you wish you had. A set of useful
or reusable chunks
What is it?
A File

• Chunks identified
• Id, Title
• Managed
• Status, Owner
• Version
• Described
• Abstract, Summary
• Subject

Whats in it?
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Enter Schemas

• Tight definition of the parts of a document
• Each part named
• Metadata types and values clearly set and enforced

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The Metadata Ladder
What is it?
The editor you wish you had Making a chunk into
a standard set of elements
What is it?
A File

• Elements identified
• Id, Title
• Managed
• Status, Owner
• Version
• Described (as needed)

Whats in it?
Whats in it?
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Enter XML Instances

• Enforcement of schemas
• WYSIWYG authoring
• In-situ metadata typing and lists
• Not well loved

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The Metadata Ladder
What is it?
What is its all the way down!
What is it?
A File
What is it?
What is it?
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So, What is Metadata?

• The way you tag a resource so you can keep track
  of and manage it and so others can find and use
  it!

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More Information

• iSchool.washington.edu
• CMS Lab
• Connection Program
• www.metatorial.com
• White papers, Presentations
• CM Poster
• CMS Planner
• Concept of the week
• Content Management Bible
• Amazon.com
• Everything I know (almost)
• Online at metatorial.com