Friday, September 18, 2009

Week 4 - Notes

Database

It's interesting how much a DBMS does (development/interrogation/maintenance/development). I don't usually think of a database doing anything, aside from sitting there and holding the information. There are also a lot more types of databases and models than I realized. There are also a lot of safeguards in place, both for security purposes and to prevent computer troubles. One doesn't tend to realize that databases have the potential to cause these things - again, I typically thought of a database just being there. Judging from this, though, there are a lot of little things that they do that never occured to me.

Metadata

This is a term I'd heard before, but I never really gave it thought. I think what made it click is the mention of dates on websites, to know when the information is from - in a computer class I took, one of our assignments was to judge how reliable some websites were, and it being up-to-date was a criteria. I can see how it applies to libraries, though, as adding metadata to something makes it easier to categorize, and thus easier to access.

Dublin Core Data Model

The main thing I got out of this, basically, is that it combines the other two articles for the week. That is, they're trying to make a database of metadata.

2 comments:

  1. I agree on databases, who knew there is that much information stored across such a wide variety of databases. I just really was not a fan of the wikipedia page and how densely it was filled in. I assume database is not a very hot topic on wikipedia so the page is not looked at often, but the database on database is not very user friendly.

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  2. I am impressed by the fact you managed to get that much out of the Dublin Core article since I got nothing out of it.

    I also agree on your comments on databases. They strike me as much more useful and important and well-used than I would have ever thought.

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