Week 2: Multipurpose Metadata

A data visualization of the movement patterns of 100,000 players in 10,000 games.

The National Information Standards Organization had pointed out that, “Metadata is key to ensuring that resources will survive and continue to be accessible into the future” (1). Throughout the article, the three main types of metadata that were discussed seemed to focus on how to properly document a resource’s identity, origin, and other information needed to preserve or archive the resource. However, what I found in Gilliland’s article that felt more relevant to the general public’s association with metadata was that multiple versions of a digital object can be reformed to fit any user’s need or point of view. Thus, the identification of one form of metadata can become a very complicated path of tracing one type of information object to the next. It really fascinates me that such a complex system exists that we can use metadata to categorize any information object at any level of aggregation no matter how different the information object can become in its lifetime.

As a gaming enthusiast, this particular article jumped out to me because it was a form of data visualization that captured the movements of 100,000 players and mapped their patterns across 10,000 games. The video in itself was a collection of metadata comprised in the recordings of 10,000 games hosted by another site. As you scroll to the bottom of the page, the article consists of another set of videos that show the movements of different roles in the game along with gifs on the side that portray examples of those roles. Upon inspecting the elements of the site, I was able to find all of the information objects’ metadata found in the form of URLs of the gifs and other images used in the article. This relatively new way of interacting with metadata raised a few questions that were addressed in Gilliland’s article.

What I imagined when I read this article was a series of nesting dolls in which this article was composed of multiple digital objects that all had different metadata on their own. However, when they were all aggregated into this one article through hyperlinks and embedment, it became another digital archive with its own identifiable metadata. This relates to another point brought up by Gilliland that along with the development of the Internet and its networked digital information systems, many issues arise that must be addressed with new types of metadata. In the brief section about multiversioning, she talks about a need for metadata that can differentiate what is qualitatively different between versions of digitalized objects beyond descriptive metadata. For example, by creating a gif composed of either animated or static images, a different form of metadata would be necessary to tackle the variations of the original information objects. This also leads to further questions regarding legal issues and intellectual property rights that would warrant another form of metadata to shift through the multiple layers of an information system and identify the original creators of its contents.

Works Cited:

National Information Standards Organization, “What is Metadata?” (Bethesda, MD: NISO Press, 2004)

Anne Gilliland, “Setting the Stage,” from Murtha Baca, ed., Introduction to Metadata (Los Angeles: Getty, 2008)

Tom Giratikanon, J. (2014). Watch 10,000 League of Legends Games in 30 Seconds. [online] Nytimes.com. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/10/technology/league-of-legends-graphic.html?_r=0 [Accessed 13 Oct. 2014].