Metadata

Yesterday I attended a webinar provided by the Society of American Archivists at the Virginia Historical Society. Although it's for credit for DAS certification, in which I am nowhere near but now want, I thought, "what the hell, it's free and local" and went. Soooo...yeah, I now want a DAS certification and I believe it would be attainable for me. This was the "Beginners to Metadata" and explained 1). what is metadata (data of data...blah, blah....technical definitions) and 2). a quick overview of the similaries and differences of the main standards: MARC for libraries, EAD for archives and VRA for art museums. I liked the analogy that you can think of these and the tons of others as forms of "speech". They all have semantics, structure and syntax. So it'll be comparing your own local vernacular- for me that would be- English with a Southern accent(not that big though- but compared to someone say from Massachusetts) and I say "soda" instead of "pop". The same is for metadata typology. There seems to be a base "English" and then "accents""Southern" and then local vernacular terms "soda".

In short, I approved of this webinar and highly recommended to any library/museum/archive person just generally confused about metadata standards.

So I'm determined to finish learning HTML, then I'll move onto XML and SQL, and hopefully learn EAD on the way. I'm also striking the idea of getting a PhD(come on, I don't like history that much) and focusing on getting certifications- SAA Archivist, GIS and SAA DAS(Digital Archives Specialist).

And yes, I totally spent down time at work practicing HTML instead of commenting on blackboard. HTML was way more entertaining, believe me. My mom and my boyfriend both agree that I'll be a good programmer, I just think I found my ambition. Gotta make it happen.