Metadata and Ubiquitous Access to Culture, Science and Digital Humanities
ABSTRACT
The need for structured metadata to support ubiquitous access across the Web to the treasure troves of resources spanning cultures, in science, and in the digital humanities is now common knowledge among information systems designers and implementers. Structured metadata expressed through languages of description make it possible for us to 'speak' about the contents of our treasure troves. But, like all human languages, our languages of description both enable and isolate. The push to break out of the isolation of the metadata silos in which professionals inevitably design, implement and manage metadata in order to discover the intersections of our treasure troves drives much of today's discourse and emerging practice in metadata. The emergence of massively integrated Web presences such as Europeana and the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) along with the reshaping of public access globally through mechanisms such as Linked Data and schema.org drive our conversations, our excitement, and our fears. Every year the DCMI community gathers for both its Annual Meeting and its International Conference on Dublin Core & Metadata Applications. The work agenda of the DCMI community is broad and inclusive of all aspects of innovation in metadata design, implementation and best practices. While the work of the Initiative progresses throughout the year, the Annual Meeting & Conference provides the opportunity for DCMI "citizens" as well as newcomers, students, apprentices, and early career professionals to gather face-to-face to share experiences. In addition, the gathering provides public- and private-sector initiatives beyond DCMI that are doing significant metadata work to come together to compare notes and cast a broader light into their particular metadata work silos. Through such a gathering of the metadata communities, DCMI advances its "first goal" of promoting metadata interoperability and harmonization. This year, the Annual Meeting & Conference is being hosted by the Universidade Estadual Paulista—São Paulo State University » and held in São Paulo, Brazil.
