[Sigia-l] User-Centered Metadata

[H Taylor]

> I agree with Jim.
> 
> I've seen the term user-centered metadata pop up often and from what I can
> tell the precise definition is still coming into focus. If you ask me, there
> is no such thing as user-centered metadata, but rather just plain old
> metadata that facilitates the increased demand for user-centered 'features
> and tools to help people interactively mine data, generate patterns, and
> conduct analysis on data'.
> 
> Here is an article from D-Lib that I found somewhat relevant:
> 
> http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july03/07inbrief.html

I wonder if this idea of "User-Centered Metadata" is simply making a
distinction between metadata likely to be of interest/useful to system
users, and metadata typically of interest only to DBA's and system
engineers, i.e., tables, table structure, keys, allowable values, etc.

...whereas User-Centered Metadata would more like focus on data description,
which is more likely to be of interest to people attempting to *use* the
actual data. 

Remember that IA-types are not the only ones who think about metadata -- the
term has a history within the tech community.

Perhaps it's that simple?

-Hal Taylor