Creating Great Metadata; Libraries, Schools, and Internet2
Professional Reading Shelf
Metadata
Source: PerX New Publication: The Power of Good Metadata Discussed in 'Marketing' with Metadata -- How Metadata Can Increase Exposure and Visibility of Online Content
From a synopsis, "'Marketing' with Metadata - How Metadata Can Increase Exposure and Visibility of Online Content is aimed at content providers of various kinds -- for example, journal publishers, professional societies and database providers and owners -- who may have such data, or metadata, available for the content they produce."
See Also: Metadata (via Digital Curation Centre)
A chapter from the DCC Curation Manual.
Excellent intro to metadata.
See Also: Introduction to Metadata: Pathways to Digital Information (via Getty Research Institute)
A full text book on the topic.
--
Internet2--Statistics
Source: Internet2 New Survey Shows Access and Usage of Internet2 in Schools, Public Libraries, and Elsewhere
From the summary:
K12 Schools
+ 35971 out of 98335 or 37% of the K12 Schools in the United States are
connected to Internet2 via the SEGP Program.
+ 4350 out of 35971, or 12%, of K12 Schools connect to the Internet2
backbone network at >= 10 Mbps.
+ 17% of state education networks report between 50 - 100% of the K12
Schools they connect are multi-cast enabled.
+ State education networks report, on average, that 44% of the K12 Schools
they connnect have H.323, DVTS, MPEG, or other video conferencing codecs
available.
Public Libraries
+ 3325 out of 16991 or 20% of the Public Libraries in the United States are
connected to Internet2 via the SEGP Program.
+ 229 out of 3325, or 7%, of Public Libraries connect to the Internet2
backbone network at >= 10 Mbps. Totals
"More than 46,000 K-12 schools, community colleges, libraries, and museums in 35 U.S. states are now connected to the Internet2 backbone network." SummaryDirect to Full Text of Study See Also: Learn More About Internet2
"Internet2 is a consortium being led by 207 universities working in partnership with industry and government to develop and deploy advanced network applications and technologies, accelerating the creation of tomorrow's Internet."
-- Weblogs
Wikis
Source: Intelligent Enterprise One Person's Opinion: Wikis, Blogs, and Other Points of Failure
A column by Joshua Greenbaum. From the column, "I hate to be the one to throw cold water on the latest cool thing, but wikis and blogs -- and all the other unwashed, untethered, so-called "new information" sources proliferating across the enterprise -- are, all too often, just a lot of bunk masquerading as information...The integrity of all information -- corporate or private -- rests on the ability of users to judge the validity of the source. So heaven help us if no one calls the bloggers and wikites on the carpet when they mislead and misinform; degrading information on the Internet will globalize ignorance to an incredible degree. And the last thing anyone needs these days is more global stupidity. We have enough politicians contributing to that problem already."
-- Vocabularies--Medical
Source: NLM New Fact Sheets Provide Info About Unified Medical Language System
+ Unified Medical Language System
"The purpose of NLM's Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) is to facilitate the development of computer systems that behave as if they "understand" the meaning of the language of biomedicine and health."
+ UMLS Metathesaurus
"The Metathesaurus is a very large, multi-purpose, and multi-lingual vocabulary database that contains information about biomedical and health-related concepts, their various names, and the relationships among them."
+ UMLS Semantic Network
"The Semantic Network consists of (1) a set of broad subject categories, or Semantic Types, that provide a consistent categorization of all concepts represented in the UMLS Metathesaurus and (2) a set of useful and important relationships, or Semantic Relations, that exist between Semantic Types."
A family of resources to help information workers be more effective, raise the value of information in their organisations and contribute to success. Read more »
Recently I have found myself cooing over visualisation maps (and heat maps) of health and well being resources. The content rich data is overlayed with mapping technologies, and some interesting themes and patterns are emerging.
A lot of the talk around social media in the last year has been around information overload. Social media has provided us with new and exciting ways to create content. But it has also meant learning new ways to manage and engage with social media tools. Are we teetering on the edge of an information overload precipice?
Information overload is a figment of your imagination. Or a failure of your filter. Or a symptom of your technological submissiveness. Depends on who you ask.
What if you had to sort through 3.5 million articles and social media posts a day and try to pull out the most relevant items for your organisation? What if you then had to cobble it all together into something readable for your top groups and executives in your organisation?
Alacra Compliance saves time by aggregating information from both free and fee-based sources and enabling users to conduct an accurate federated search across these sources (coined “simultaneous search” by Alacra).
FreePint Family
Quilting big data threads
The fallacy of information overload
Information overload: fact, fantasy or filter failure? 
