1@urbanmapping

Metadata MattersIan WhiteSeptember 5, 2013

2@urbanmapping

Achtung!NoSQL is no panacea

Big Data isn’t about dataBig Data isn’t newBig Data doesn’t present a Boolean

quandaryWith power comes responsibility- AWS bills- Lady Gaga tweets- Innumeracy (correlation v causation)

3@urbanmapping

One Person’s Metadata is Another Person’s Data

4@urbanmapping

Big v Important

BigHeterogeneousRawDistributedStreaming/real

timeSearch for

meaningTime-sensitivePhilosophical

ImportantWell-defined schemaHigh value (not free)Test-drivenRelationalHistoricalEnterprise-focused

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Data Exhaust

Analytics Probes

Social Media Gov2.0

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Platforms

Commoditization of compute and storage

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A Brief History of Metadata

Callimachus Library of Alexandria, Egypt

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A Brief History of Metadata

“Pinakes” (lists)TitleCategoryAuthorAuthor birthplaceFatherWord count

Callimachus

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A Brief History of Metadata

Johan van der Does Johan van der Does

Leiden University, 1595Leiden University, 1595

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@urbanmapping

A Brief History of Metadata

Melville DeweyMelville Dewey

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@urbanmapping

A Brief History of Metadata

Card catalog room, Library of Congress c. 1920

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@urbanmapping

A Brief History of Metadata

Dewey Decimal System goes electronic in 1967

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Out with the Old, in with the New

Archiving card catalogs after digitization

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Why Can’t We Be Together?

Metadata Data

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@urbanmapping

Exponential Growth in Data

Unprecedented rate of data creation, 1995-today

1876

TaxonomyPinakes

300 BC

Database

1970

Catalog

1595 AD

Vo

lum

e o

f D

ata

Ge

ne

rate

d

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@urbanmapping

Oh, How I’ve Missed You!The reunification of metadata with data

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Together At Last!

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GIS Remains Unevolved

+ =Melville DeweyMelville Dewey

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@urbanmapping

Enter the Data CuratorPart social scientist, part librarian, part statistician, part RDBMS wiz

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@urbanmapping

DIKW ModelData

Fact, Signal, Symbol

InformationStructural v FunctionalSymbolic v Subjective

KnowledgeProcessedProcedural

Propositional

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Popularity Contest

Metadata

Big Data

Data ScienceCuration

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@urbanmapping

c.2013

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@urbanmapping

One Person’s Metadata is Another’s Data