Metadata of mega-importance?

First, what is the RFD tag for "dang, you, Amanda!"? I followed her suggestion to checkout bloglines.com, even though I really should have been writing my own blog. I quickly got sucked into that world and completely lost track of the time. Sometimes with this class I feel like I'm beginning an addiction. It starts with just a little bit, just something you do on the weekends (not class, but the interesting links you visit related to class). Then, you need a little more, a little mid-week pick-me up. Soon, you're doing it every day, every chance you get, trying to hide it from your family. I only realized how long I had been reading RSS Feeds--feeds of sites that I never visit, by the way, but just subscribed to because they were a quick option during registration--when my husband walked through. First, it was the image generators, then the anuice site...Now he no longer even asks, "this is what you're doing for your MLIS?"

Of course, he doesn't walk by when I'm reading the Gradman article, so that I could say, "Gee, have you ever thought about how much expertly-analyzed information is hidden in library catalogs everywhere, inaccessible to the myriad of search engines available? Wouldn't it be truly amazing and wonderful if someone searching for information on the Internet for, say, gardening, also got links to several books available at their local library?"

Unfortunately, much of the information housed within library catologs remains part of the "hidden web," as Gradman refers to it. Making those bibliographic records more accessible to the WWW would be an excellent move for libraries. We still hear those "why do we need libraries, now that we have the Internet?" comments; making our resources more findable would be a new way to market to those thinkers. A simple Google search for The Life of Pi of course pulls up links to Amazon, Powells.com, and several review sites. However, if I were interested in reading this book, I might also like to know that Tulsa City-County Library has over 20 copies of this book, at least eight of which are currently available, and that I could reserve online tonight and pick it up before online booksellers could possibly deliver it to me.

I think we must start working toward ways to escape the "golden cage," of which Gradman speaks. His proposal for FRBR seems reasonable, but I don't know enough about cataloging to really understand all of the multitude of issues involved. Undoubtably, translating all those records would be a chore. Also, I know that there are many metadata schemas currently being used and developed, and I certainly don't have the experience to say that FRBR would work better than any others. I've read about RDF, XML, TEI, EAD, DC, and others, but I think this is the first time I've heard of FRBR.

After reading his article, I did go straight to Amazon and add some XML tutorial books to my wishlist :}

With visions of magical metadata swimming in my head, I began reading Mohamed's "The Impact of Metadata in Web Resources Discovering," only to learn that his study shows that metadata has no significant effect on the rank order of web pages in certain search engines! How can this be possible? If you were to ask me what I remembered most from my Organization of Information class, I would have to say "the word METADATA!" I have to wonder if perhaps the importance of metadata goes beyond search engine rank order. Maybe it has more to do with our taking baby-steps ever closer to the Semantic Web. Or, maybe Mohamed should have just used Google, like the rest of us ;)