Sept. 18: Gradmann, Mohamed

This week's readings were about implementing metadata and Semantic Web technology to make searching the web easier and more fruitful for the user. Khaled Mohamed's "The Impact of Metadata in Web Resources Discovering" was interesting in that it explored the supposed effect of metadata tags on the findability of web sites using search engines. It also looked at how sites with metadata ranked in the results set compared to those without metadata. I found it hilarioius that almost half of the sites that were about metadata standards (for example, a Dublin Core tutorial web site) did not employ metadata elements on their sites to improve finability and ranking. The search engines Mohamed used for the study (Go, Alta Vista, and HotBot) "claimed that using metadata influenced page rank order" (165) but the author found that wasn't the case at all. He found that there was just a slight effect on page rank order when meta tags were used. Mohamed also notes at the end of his article how he had previously researched Arabic web sites and that most (98%) of them used no metadata whatsoever. He stresses the importance of looking at Arabic web sites in comparison to other international sites in terms of government information services.

To me, this just seems like everything else in the world - everyone does things a little bit differently, even when they're doing similar things, and somehow the world hasn't ended yet. Credit card machines are an example of this. Go to a grocery store, a convenience store, a department store - they all have credit card machines that customers use to pay for purchases, yet all of them are probably a little different. The customer will have to slide her/his card in a slightly different way or the buttons will be in different locations or s/he may have to sign a piece of paper, a screen on the machine or not at all. I find this mildly frustrating but it's really not that important. If everything were the same everywhere, the world would be a pretty boring place.

Stefan Gradmann's article discusses the "hidden Web" and Semantic Web technology that could be used to free bibliographic information from the isolated world of the librarian and use it to interact with information on the Web to, I assume, make information easier to find and use. I had a pretty hard time understanding this article as I have no practical experience with FRBR (and I had to Google it to find out that it is, in fact, Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) or Semantic Web technology. I found a good introduction to FRBR here. What I understood of the article is that Gradmann proposes to sort of mesh the two information representation systems together for the benefit of users who are searching for information on the Web. He lists several benefits to his proposed system, one of which is that an FRBR system would make the Web more transparent. Now, I don't really know exactly what that means to the world of librarianship, or at all to be quite honest. I've been reading the blogs of other classmates and I see that I'm not alone, which makes me feel a little better. I really have a hard time grasping concepts, especially having to do with computers, if I haven't had any experience using them. I'm sure if I did know what Gradmann was talking about, I'd think it was a really good idea. Wow, lame attempt at discussing the article, huh?

And now for something completely different... I'm using my Monty Python skit freebie this week! I recently read this article about searching the Internet and privacy. Imagine if everything, or every person, you ever Googled could somehow be linked to your identity. Scary thought, eh? Well, the Internet is still relatively new and the privacy issues that surround it are still up in the air. This article gives lots of tips for keeping your identity and other personal information safe and secure when using search engines and other information services on the Web. Be careful - Big Brother might be watching!