updating metadata pages at the School of Best Practice

[Heidi Johnson]

Dear all,
Sorry if I'm getting some of you twice by copying both groups.

At the recent E-MELD meeting, especially during the archiving panel
discussions,
I came to the realization that we are not doing a very good job of getting
the message
about OLAC metadata out into our field. The problem, I think, has been an 
over-emphasis of the technical side - the XML syntax and how to become an
OLAC
data provider - and a paucity of basic pedagogical documents aimed at
linguists who
really don't care how searching systems work. And then I realized (with a
gentle reminder 
from Gary S.) that providing those friendly documents is the job of us
OUTREACHERS, 
not of the OLAC developers, nor yet of the poor over-worked grad students
who do the 
pages for the School of Best Practice. 

I think the School is the right place to disseminate information for the
Ordinary Working
Linguists. Let the OLAC site maintain information aimed at programmers and
developers;
let the school teach the rest. It'll make things easier for us to manage,
imho.

So, I decided to rewrite the metadata pages on the School, right now, this
summer, 
while I've got some time for it and it's fresh in my mind. Jeff Good has
volunteered to
help me, but he is on the brink of becoming a father for the first time,
which can be
expected to distract him considerably. (So I could use some other
volunteers....)

My plan is to write a how-to guide that does not mention XML anywhere,
except in
a link labelled something like "technical details." My goal is to get all
linguists who collect
data to also collect and maintain OLAC metadata, in any comfortable format
they please,
so they can one day deliver their data to some repository and then they and
other people
can locate and properly cite that data. 

If any of y'all have suggestions or requests or comments on the existing
pages at the
School, I would like to hear them - soonish, if possible. I especially need
examples of OLAC 
metadata for real resources, and even more especially examples of the use of
the Relation 
element.

More metadata for the masses! 

Heidi

-----------------
Heidi Johnson, PhD
Project Manager
The Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America
1 University Station C3200
The University of Texas at Austin
Austin, Texas 78712

(512) 495-4604
hjohnson at mail.utexas.edu
http://www.ailla.utexas.org


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