Meta "Cloudspotting"

I just returned from a trip to London with my 11-year old daughter. Once we got over our “Euro-shock” (the exchange rate is around $2 USD to the GBP right now!) we had a great time. We even managed to work in two business meetings about metadata (but I’ll save that story for another day.) There’s a wonderful new book out by the British author Gavin Pretor-Pinney titled The Cloudspotter’s Guide. I had wanted to buy the book for some time before I saw it at Foyles, London ’s premiere bookstore. So I happily purchased my very own Cloudspotter’s Guide to read on my return flight home to Virginia.

 

 

Pretor-Pinney is a cloud lover. In the book’s introduction Pretor-Pinney’s offers his opinion that clouds offer an endless source fascination and beauty. Yet (inexplicably to Pretor-Pinney) society has metaphorically come to associate clear sunny days with prosperity yet any mention of cloudy skies is a forewarning of trouble and problems. In response to this public misperception about the beauty of clouds, Pretor-Pinney formed The Cloud Appreciation Society because, in his words, “someone needed to stand up for clouds.”

Clouds are beautiful and come in many forms. A new cloud variety that I’m noticing more and more is the “metadata cloud”. I’m sure that you’ve noticed these clouds too. They pop up on websites and applications to provide visual references of the topics associated with content. The metadata cloud’s content “tag list” provides a visual depiction of the content tags that describe the object. More frequently used tags are depicted in a larger font so you can quickly “see’ a tag’s popularity while less frequently used tags are displayed in smaller font. Selecting any single tag within a metadata cloud will generally display aditional items that are associated with that tag.

The problem, as The Cloudspotter’s Guide points out, is that we have a lack of clouds on our metadata horizon. The absence of tag clouds means that there is often less access available for finding the content that we’re looking for. The world is full of content, valuable content. But people can’t benefit from the information unless it is arranged in ways that make it easy to locate the information that is valuable to the information consumer. Simply digitizing a content collection isn’t enough. “Find-ability” is the key here and metadata clouds offer one method for improving findability. Content value is significantly reduced if the content collection does not support logical and accessible navigation. Well constructed metadata tags make efficient access possible and increase the value of the content to the information consumer.

Here’s a story that illustrates what I mean; A client of mine acquired nearly a hundred of hours of high-quality video footage shot in the Amazon River basin. The video footage was spectacular and all of it was shot using the best equipment and film. The client’s goal was to establish a stock video collection that would generate a revenue stream from licensing rights. Unfortunately no metadata accompanied the collection. Electronic Scriptorium provides metadata for many types of digital collections so my client had found the right cataloging partner to assist him. When we discussed the access points that the client needed in the metadata he mentioned things like identification of geographic points of interest (waterfall and river names for instance), botanical names, shot types, camera angles, etc. All the requirements could be implemented for a cost. Here’s the punchline; Once I understood the metadata requirements we discussed costs for tagging the video in a way that would support the client’s return on investment projections. His response? “We’ve already spent a lot of money to acquire the film, there’s no way we can spend that much more money just for metadata!” And the client didn’t spend the money for metadata nor did he understand the true costs of providing access prior to purchasing the video footage. That wonderful footage of jungle birds and wild water that I described? It’s mounted on a video server but there is still no method for finding specific footage or scenes. Needless to say, my client’s Amazon River content is as inaccessible than the remote regions that it depicts.

Somewhere there probably are disciplined people who conscientiously remember to tag files with metadata when they work on them. If you are not one of them metadata clouds offer an interesting (and potentially revolutionary) approach for getting a handle on your text content, especially if your hierarchical file system has grown so large that it's unmanageable. But without metadata your content can become an impenetrable jungle. Metadata clouds offer a silver lining. Cloudspotters unite!