During this program, I came to enjoy the puzzle of metadata. Following my introduction to it in ISI 5302: Knowledge Organization, I took ISI 6732: Métadonnés et taxonomies and was able to apply my existing knowledge of metadata to the two cataloguing projects completed in ISI 6354: Cultural Heritage Resources.
Metadata Schema Design
The final project for ISI 6732: Métadonnés et taxonomies was to create a metadata schema for a collection of our choice – in my case, tabletop gaming materials. This assignment made us consider the use of different types of metadata and how to represent an object through metadata in a specific context – what kinds of administrative, technical, and descriptive metadata would be useful; what fields should be static or dynamic; etc.
Digital Cataloguing
Through ISI 6354: Cultural Heritage Resources, we worked with and catalogued two different objects: a theatre maquette from the National Arts Centre archives and a cassette tape from the Canadian Women’s Movement Archive at the University of Ottawa’s Archives and Special Collections. For both of these, we learned how to follow the example of an existing implementation of a metadata scheme (in this case, Dublin Core) to describe an object. Additionally, we also, especially with the second project, discussed how to balance the cataloguer’s need to describe documents accurately while also protecting the privacy of the people involved in creating the object, whether knowingly or not. Below, I have provided a link to the online exhibit of the maquettes catalogued. My partner and I did the maquette for Alice.