Review - Digital Library Technology for Locating and Accessing Scientific Data.
Michael Lesk:
Review - Digital Library Technology for Locating and Accessing Scientific Data.
ACM SIGMOD Digital Review 1: (1999) BibTeX
Review
This interesting paper deals with the use of metadata to classify the contents
of a digital library for astronomy, containing images, papers, tables, and even
people. I would worry that the cataloging effort involved here may be
prohibitive for many situations. The paper explains why one wants metadata
sufficiently detailed to do searches on sky location, spectral position, date,
and so on, but does not give detail on what the cataloging to make this
possible will cost. Right now, indexing Web pages is extremely expensive;
compared with cataloging a book. There aren't a lot of standards for the
cataloging formats, you don't conveniently find much of the information you
need on the back of the title page, and unlike a book you have to check
regularly to see that the content is still what it was when you wrote down
the metadata. The definition of AML (astronomy macro language) helps with
the lack of standards, but the paper could really use some data on how
practical the metadata schema is to implement, and how effectively the users
can employ it. The users apparently can both browse and search the structure;
it will be interesting to see how much of each they do, and whether they are
able to make effective use of Z39.50 searching. The paper could also use some
basic information about how big the database is now and what the eventual
size will be.
Copyright © 1999 by the author(s).
Review published with permission.
References
- [1]
- Robert E. McGrath, Joe Futrelle, Raymond Plante, Damien Guillaume:
Digital Library Technology for Locating and Accessing Scientific Data.
CoRR cs.DL/9902012: (1999) BibTeX
BibTeX
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