Introduction to databases and metadata

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Workshop outline• What are databases?

• What are the elements of databases?• What is metadata?• Why are they important for digital projects?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Rafia MirzaDigital Humanities Librarian

rafia@uta.edu@librarianrafia

Contact information

Why create a database? • Databases: • Sets of related data that

contain information used to organize a collection of (digital ) items • Used to organize

information in such a way that it is easily: • Accessed• Managed • Updated • Via

Database standards • Database standards

make sure info is organized in such a way that future users can easily find info they are looking for.• ---------------------• Looks pretty but only

useful if future user cares about book color and not book content

Photo by STML https://flic.kr/p/2NwbJL

Relational Data • Relational data is how you let the computer know that fields in

different worksheets/ tables are related • Unique Elements allow the computer program you are using to

understand how to relate data from multiple tables in your workbook to each other • It allows merging of tables and disparate data sets

• So in certain projects you will have a workbook with multiple worksheets• Each worksheet will have an element (like an id number) that will

relate (be the same) to another worksheet in that workbook

Relational Data • Here is an example of how unique elements in each table relate

to at least one other table

Image via Kenneth E. Foote and Donald J. Huebner, The Geographer's Craft Project, Department of Geography, The University of Colorado at Boulder.

What is Metadata? • “Metadata was traditionally in the card catalogs of libraries. ..”

Image of Card Catalog - Reading Room via www.GlynLowe.com Image of Card Catalog 2 via bookfinch

What is Metadata? • “…As information

has become increasingly digital, metadata is also used to describe digital data using metadata standards specific to a particular discipline.” via wikipedia

Metadata in everyday life

What are Metadata Standards?

Example of a metadata standard: Dublin Core

• Dublin Core is a metadata standard used by libraries and archives for digital items that consists of 15 basic fields that can be used to describe any digital object, no matter what it is

Example of a metadata standard: ID3

• "ID3 is a de facto standard for metadata in MP3 files” via wikiepdia • “ID3 tags provide the Title, Artist, Year, Genre and other great information when you're listening to music….

• “An ID3 tag is a data container within an MP3 audio file stored in a prescribed format. This data commonly contains the Artist name, Song title, Year and Genre of the current audio file.” via id3.org

Image via Wikipedia

Input Rules

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