Thursday 24 July 2008, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin, 1000-1630

Professor David Bawden, City University, London

This course provides a practical introduction to principles and practice of metadata, using as examples the most widely-used formats. It demystifies the concept of metadata, and shows how and why it is used, in a variety of environments. A variety of commonly-used metadata formats will be demonstrated for example Dublin Core, and AACR/MARC – and the way in which metadata creation relates to the ‘traditional’ library/information tasks of indexing and cataloguing will be outlined.

Programme

1000 Registration and coffee

1030 Introduction to course

1045 What is Metadata? Using Metadata

1145 Practical exercise 1: why metadata?

1200 Descriptive metadata

1245 Practical exercise 2: creating descriptive metadata

1315 Lunch

14.00 Subject metadata

14.45 Practical exercise 3: creating subject metadata

15.15 Break

15.30 Metadata policies

Choosing metadata formats

Cataloguing and indexing policies

16.00 Practical exercise 4: creating a metadata policy

16.15 Summary and conclusion

16.30 Close