Cataloging Yesterday and Today:
Where am I going with this? Well, other than the obvious kitsch value, think about how these cassettes might have been cataloged. You would assume the cataloger would have recorded that the audio recording spanned 21 cassette tape sides as well as other medium specific metadata. This got me thinking about surrogates, now that I have this recording as an .mp3, how important is it that information? Do I really need to know that the recording spans 21 cassette sides?

How much is too much information?:
I have the information that I need, Terry Goodkind’s original story. The fact that it was sliced up into 10 cassettes is not really relevant, as that was just a limitation of the medium at the time and does not effect the overall story.It might affect the quality of the digital transfer, but am I the listener really concerned with the quality (its pretty good considering its from a cassette) or is my real goal the actual content. I would vote on the side of content. Was the medium that I’m receiving it in important to the whole?

To Catalog the Details or Not?
How much time did that cataloger in 1994 spend recording this medium specific information, only to have it all kind of negated by the fact that it’s now an .mp3 making the cassette surrogates kinda irrelevant? Regardless of the cassette version, Richard still fights the good fight in his quest for Truth. So would I really be missing something by not knowing how many cassettes his journey was recorded on 16 years ago? I might just wonder why the recording sounds so analog, but other than that, what am I the end user getting from that information?

Readers ask yourselves, “How much time do you spend recording medium specific information about surrogates that might be irrelevant 10 years down the line?” Was it worth it? Flip to the other side of the coin and ask yourself, “What are the consequences of not recording this information?”

Date: Monday, November 10th, 2008
Time: 12:00 PM – 4:00 PM
Place: NYU Kimmel Center
60 Washington Square South, Room 405, New York, NY 10012

You can find resources to my presentation posted below including my keynote deck as a PDF here which includes my offbeat speech notes. I will say that its probably not fascinating reading compared to actually attending one of my talks. My deck style is a bit unconventional, it’s heavy on imagery and short on text. I am a big fan of Edward Tufte and I take his minimal stance when it comes to creating PowerPoint presentations. In fact I even prefer Keynote over PowerPoint all together.

Here is a list of some of my go-to resources:

Metadata Working Group, boxesandarrows, AIIM: Infonomics Magazine, AIIM: Blog, KMWorld, 37 Signals: Signal vs. Noise Weblog, Digital Curation Center: Tools, XMP Open: The Idea Exchange, Adobe XMP, Adobe XMP: Developers Center, ReadWriteWeb

…for more links please follow me on Del.icio.us

Hope you enjoyed the presentation and feel free to send me any questions you may have.

As a digital archivist, I ingest, assess and manage digital files (i.e. images and photographs) and paper records using digital asset and collection management systems. My work includes traditional archives activities such as finding aids, collection processing, assessment, accessions, storage and handling. I am a Metadata specialist for digital arts and photography, working with taxonomies, controlled vocabularies and current metadata schemas (i.e. Dublin Core).

As an information manager, I’m passionate about creating working environments that apply current technologies to business operations and practices. I work closely with staff and create digital workflows, organizational methods and records management policies. I am an ardent supporter of incorporating Web 2.0 technologies in organizations to foster productivity and creativity. I help people gain control of information overload and connect to the information they need.

Environments: Museum Archives, Academic Archives, Institutional Archives, Cultural Institutions, Design Studios, Photography Studios, Private Libraries and Small Offices.

Specialties:

Digital files, Paper records, Photographs, Digital asset management (DAM), Web 2.0, Information design, Usability, Knowledge Management and Workflow creation