Metadata Schemes: Does the Public Care?

In class December 11th we had a discussion on the issue of whether or not it mattered to the public what metadata scheme archivists used. The majority of the class seemed to be of the opinion that the public was indifferent to metadata, and that discussions of metadata had extremely limited impact outside of the information science field.

It is difficult to argue with this view. The public cares about as much about the inner workings of various finding aids as it does the inner workings of microwave ovens, cellular metabolism, and the American legislative process. The term "metadata" is still a highly specialized term, when I tell people that I am taking a course on "data about data" I get some very quizzical looks, even from educated people.

Librarians/information science professionals are extremely keen on cataloging and organizing information. Organizing information is how we define our profession and without that goal we would lose our raison d'etre.

The unfortunate thing for librarians/information science professionals is that we are far from the cutting edge of the information field. Leaps in humanity's ability to find information come not from university information scientists, but from entrepreneurial computer scientists. At the same time in the 1990s that archivists were arguing about EAD and pushing for its acceptance, a few Comp Sci PhD students at Stanford were creating Google.

Google, a web engine, not a programming language, has changed how we seek and find information more than any metadata scheme. Google's power comes from the fact that Larry Page and Sergey Brin's success came from something that changed how a program seeks information. By contrast, a metadata scheme attempts to be powerful based on how people input (ie, tag) information.