Week Four Readings

Yet another Wikipedia article and I don't have much to say about it.  It was long, it was dry.  

I liked the second article a lot, in particular the "metadata is like interest - it accrues over time" quote. I'm a big fan of using metadata to analyze library needs.  Much like Moneyball in baseball exploits market inefficiencies, effective collection and manipulation of metadata can be a real organizational advantage in a library.  Take down stats on everything; if it can be quantified, do it.  It'll really help give you a picture of what's going on where you work, of what's important, of what's popular, of what needs work.  Try it out by categorizing what types of questions the front desk gets.  Too many "where's the bathroom?" type questions?  Improve signage.  See patrons using databases a lot more than books?  Make sure the budget reflects that, or start a program to make physical library holdings more popular.  

I couldn't get the Dublincore link to open up.  Anyone else have this problem?  So naturally I went straight to Wikipedia to read about it.  Again, dry, although I see some of these concepts in MARC records.