[quote="ssalonso"] [quote="jackiewickham"] There are two main purposes for metadata - to enable people to discover things and to enable machines to talk to each other. (Well perhaps three if you count metadata that supports preservation and administration - or is that four?).... [/quote] Well, in my opinion, from a teacher's perspective the most important thing about metadata is that it helps me to select the resources I need without inspecting all the elements in veeeeeeeeeeeeery long lists of educational resources. But if you want to get it like this, your metadata must be good, descriptive and apropriate for everyone. If also multilingual, you will guarantee the ssame benefits for a wider audience. Metadata descriptions like "A photo of an organic farm" are useless, so if this is what we are prepared to put in, let's forget about. Instead, comprehensive, detailed, standard-complinat metadata are pricesless!! Regards, Salvador [/quote] Thanks Salvador. It's really important to get the user's view - that's the point of creating the metadata in the first place. It would be interesting to find out from you which of the metadata elements are the most useful. Earlier this year, I did some work on a multi-institutional project in the UK which aimed to "free" educational resources created in universities (our project covered medicine, dentistry and veterinary science). Not surprisingly, I worked on the metadata workstream alongside a colleague, David Davies, from Warwick University. We ran a survey and focus groups to ask teachers what metadata was important for them in discovery and assessment of resources. http://www.rsp.ac.uk/events/SummerSchool2010/Presentations/Resource%20discovery.pdf There were some interesting results. For example, "When choosing a learning resource, how influenced are you by those who created it? There was a 50:50 split between those who thought it important and those who didn't. In the focus groups, there was a strong view that the teachers wanted to evaluate their own resources - so the key metadata was good keywords and a short but high quality description.

[quote="msicilia"] Hi, The main question of this topic is actually the central theme of all the people like me that work in systems supporting and exploiting metadata. The question is : where is the value in metadata? Here you have a paper I coauthored some time ago about this critical issue: http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1389548 However, we actually did not provide answers to the question but only more questions. Just as for other Information System resources, metadata needs to be cost-justified, be it with cost-benefit analysis, strategic resource theories as the resource-based view of the firm, or any other kind of effectiveness or efficiency related argument. The problem is that there are few reports on this issue, and our understanding of the value of metadata is still in its inception. More empirical studies and in-depth analysis is for sure required! All the best, Miguel-Angel [/quote] Hi Miguel-Angel This looks like a really interesting article but I can't access it :cry: Is it possible to also publish it in an open access way or is this restricted by the publishers. I'd really like to read the full text. Best wishes Jackie

[quote="ameha"] [quote="Lisa-Cespedes"] Providing quality metadata: Is the gain worth the effort? The topic above, is refined with the questions that follow in the post of the Moderator of Topic 2. You can either reply to this general topic, or address one of the other questions. [/quote] I think providing quality metadata has much benefits that one might think of, but as long as a standard is used I am sure the quality will be kept alive. [/quote] That's a good point about using standards. I'm reminded of the late, great Groucho Marx who said: "These are my principles, and if you don't like them...well, I have others". It's perhaps the same with standards - if you don't like one, have a look at the others. A colleague of mine at the University of Nottingham recently posted a very entertaining and sensilble blog about the plethora of standards and has suggested a useful way forward: http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/learningtechnology/2010/10/05/babelona-the-tower-of/ There are two main purposes for metadata - to enable people to discover things and to enable machines to talk to each other. (Well perhaps three if you count metadata that supports preservation and administration - or is that four?). There does seem to be a gap in the metadata world - we don't seem to have any way of evaluating metadata shemas in terms of their usefulness in connection with these two purposes and, dare I say it, their return on investmment. Does anyone know of anything or have any ideas about this?