Wade and John Sheppard, “How Teachers Teach Shakespeare,” Educational Review 46, no. 1 (January 1, 1994): 21–28.
6. For example, my public library in Omaha, Nebraska, accessed May 7, 2018, https://omaha.bibliocommons.com/v2/search?query=JavaScript&searchType=smart, showed thirty “Website or Online Data” sources, when I searched for JavaScript after logging on as a registered user.
7. Folger Shakespeare Library, stacks.
Fostering an Understanding of the Value of Metadata in Digital Humanities
Hamilton College
DIGITAL HUMANITIES PROJECTS REQUIRE WIDE-RANGING skill sets and awareness of many tools and resources, including the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI), digitization practices, geographic information systems (GIS), data visualization, and metadata. While digital humanities projects are usually produced by the combined effort of a number of experts in these fields, it is still imperative to introduce those new to digital humanities to a broad overview of many of these topics so that they are aware of the role these resources play in digital humanities and how these tools can be used to benefit their projects.1
Metadata is a crucial part of digital humanities because it provides a way of accessing and organizing data. Metadata provides key terms and phrases for finding digital objects, ranging from newspaper articles and essays to interviews, photographs, and videos. Adding metadata allows objects in a repository to be findable and improves their discoverability. It can be used to supplement full-text searching and adds value by correcting misspellings, supplementing abbreviations so that they are searchable, and adding alternate spellings to facilitate searching.2 Therefore, metadata is the foundation of the work that is done by scholars, allowing for the careful description of objects in ways that support new connections between objects and the analysis of items within a collection.
A basic understanding of metadata should be taught in all classes that are focused on developing skills in digital humanities in order to instill an early understanding of both the importance of metadata and the general principles of how to create metadata. In the past, metadata has been viewed primarily as librarians’ work; however, developing skills in metadata will allow those embarking on a journey into digital humanities to develop a deeper understanding of their data. The usefulness of this information literacy extends beyond digital humanities into the broader topic of digital scholarship. Developing a clear understanding of metadata while having the opportunity to create metadata is crucial to the development of a foundation for digital humanities scholars at all levels.
The following is a general suggested approach for a one-shot metadata-centric session in a digital humanities class. It may be adapted for use by librarians and professors who are seeking to educate students on how metadata is an important part of the digital humanities research that is being done, regardless of topical areas. This grounding of the discussion of metadata into the larger context of digital humanities will allow students to develop more comprehensive insights into the digital humanities projects they have reviewed in class, providing them with the ability to see the role that metadata plays in digital humanities projects.
SETTING THE STAGE
It is imperative to set the stage for a discussion about metadata with undergraduate students who are enrolled in an introduction to digital humanities course. Students may be intimidated upon first hearing that they will be working with metadata. While students may know the basic definition of metadata (i.e., “data about data”), this definition is insufficient because the word data can be vague to those who are new to the field of information. Instead, starting with what is familiar when introducing the topic to them, and using scaffolding to help them build from what they know to the unknown, will more quickly gain their interest.
There are several ways to accomplish this. One way that is frequently successful as an initial overture toward making them feel more comfortable is to try incorporating an example of the everyday organization of information using metadata that they create, and organize by, without even realizing it. One favorite question to pose is, “How do you organize your closet?” There are numerous ways of doing this (e.g., by color, by type of clothing item, by season, by style, by outfit, as well as by some combination of these), and getting students to realize that they are already working with and organizing objects using metadata is an eye-opening experience for many of them.
Another example that gets students thinking about metadata and how it exists in different forms depending on the object is an example involving cookie cutters. To start the discussion, a photograph of a dozen or so cookie cutters in various shapes, sizes, and colors is shown. The students are then presented with the discussion prompt of how they might organize them. Some possibilities include by color, by season (e.g., Christmas cookie cutters, Valentine’s Day cookie cutters), by size, and by type (e.g., depicting living animals, depicting humans, inanimate objects). This can also be done by dividing students into groups and having them physically manipulate the cookie cutters, which is especially useful for students who are tactile learners. These fun examples of organizing show students that creating metadata is not as intimidating as it might initially seem.
PRINCIPLES OF METADATA
Once the seed has been planted that students are already using metadata in their daily lives and that organizing information is the principle behind the creation of metadata, defining information is a good next step. One definition of information is the communication or reception of knowledge that exists in the mind of someone who understands the subject matter.3 Using a definition such as this can lead to a discussion that information has characteristics (e.g., size, creator, title) and those characteristics can be used to organize the various pieces of information about an object. These characteristics are then used to build a metadata schema.
Metadata is used to describe objects and to build relationships between objects. The cartoon by John Norris is a perfect example of the benefits of using metadata. (See fig. 7.1.) The top panel of this cartoon shows a user looking through an interface at objects that are filed into folders in drawers. The user is forced to look through these drawers to try to find the desired item, with the user having to select a single drawer for an item that has the ability to fit into two different drawers or that perhaps does not match any of the drawers available. This process is an inefficient method that leads to user frustration at not easily finding the desired item(s).
The bottom panel of the cartoon illustrates the difference when metadata is used for organizing objects. Instead of hunting through folders for objects that can only live in one place, the user quickly locates relevant items because the metadata brings together related items no matter where they are stored. Combining the earlier closet and cookie cutter organizational discussions with the cartoon’s illustrations allows the students to think about metadata through a more familiar lens and draws upon their personal experiences organizing information without realizing that they were already working with metadata.
Figure 7.1. John
