Addie - Metadata & Databases

I think of metadata as the information attached to something that tells us what it is and helps us find or understand it. It can include basic things like the creator, date, place, subject, or format. One thing from Chapter 4 that stood out to me was that metadata is not just a technical detail. Someone has to decide what categories to use and what information is important enough to include. The chapter talks about classification and controlled vocabularies, which made me think about how much organization happens behind the scenes when we search a museum or library collection.

I understood databases in a similar way. They are systems for storing information, but what seems important is how they organize relationships between different pieces of information. The example in Chapter 5 with artists, works, and owners helped make this clearer to me. Instead of putting everything into one huge list, a database can separate information into different tables and then connect them. That seems especially useful for DH projects because humanities materials usually have a lot of connections between people, objects, places, dates, and events.

I can see both ideas in my project on the MFA’s Homer and the Epics. For example, the mixing bowl that shows scenes from the fall of Troy is more useful online because there is information explaining what the object is, what is pictured on it, and how those scenes connect to Homer and the Trojan War. Without that descriptive information, a user might just see a picture of an ancient bowl without knowing what to look for. The site also connects physical objects with photographs, written explanations, and audio from the Iliad and Odyssey. A database is what can keep all of those different materials organized and connected.

This also seems pretty relevant to our upcoming curation work with the UNH Library and Art Department. If we are putting together a digital collection, we will have to make choices about how objects are labeled, what information gets recorded, and how different items are grouped together. Those decisions might sound small, but they will affect whether someone can actually find an object and understand why it belongs in the collection.