tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929346053949579231.post5181954010505299079..comments2024-03-23T00:59:24.057-04:00Comments on Sapping Attention: Is catalog information really metadata?Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04856020368342677253noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929346053949579231.post-54956145673662368932011-09-06T15:03:30.871-04:002011-09-06T15:03:30.871-04:00Digression, nominally @Ted: It's very odd how ...Digression, nominally @Ted: It's very odd how much this has to do with code. To make an interface work more cleanly, I ended up coding a Python layer to wrap my MySQL database, and that seemed to work more cleanly the less I treated word as different than catalog data. Plus, it starts to make more interesting queries easier. I really think I'm going to try to do it more often, even though it involves the weird step of writing what amounts to an API to use a database I already have access to.<br /><br />I agree that calling it metadata vs. data is purely conventional; more important, I think, is not separating them so much that they can't both fill either role. (Although I think in the last example I still wouldn't call the books metadata to distinguish two distinct data series: actual violence in Ireland, and then some model of violence in Ireland one could construct with wordcounts, publication information, metadata by looking up author last names against census records that tell which names tend Protestant and which Catholic, etc. Those two distinct series might or might not be highly correlated--probably not very correlated, alas.)Benhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04856020368342677253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929346053949579231.post-43064512615790970882011-09-05T15:26:35.110-04:002011-09-05T15:26:35.110-04:00You're certainly right that I habitually make ...You're certainly right that I habitually make a distinction between wordcount data and catalog metadata. It's burned into my code and data structures.<br /><br />I like the reminder that we need to be alert to patterns that are located *between* these levels.<br /> <br />I also agree that, in principle, all of this is "metadata." It would be absurd for copyright holders to claim ownership of wordcounts. And it's almost equally absurd for us to imagine that wordcounts are in themselves, e.g., a barometer of "fame."<br /><br />Of course the data/metadata boundary is a flexible, contextual convenience ... For certain kinds of historical questions -- e.g. social or economic questions -- the texts themselves might almost count as "metadata." E.g., books written about Irish violence are not necessarily direct evidence that violence was increasing in Ireland!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com