Demonstrate understanding of basic principles and standards involved in organizing information such as classification and controlled vocabulary systems, cataloging systems, metadata schemas or other systems for making information accessible to a particular clientele. A satisfactory statement of competence - Shows knowledge and application of official standards for organizing a particular kind of information Demonstrates knowledge of basic principles, de facto standards, and best practices for organizing information in physical and virtual environments Applies standards and principles to make information accessible.
Information must be organized through some kind of classification or controlled vocabulary system, which include cataloging systems, metadata schemas, and best practices for how to make information accessible. One of the basic principles of organizing information is to create information retrieval design projects that give me the opportunity to work with controlled vocabulary and create rules to make information accessible to users. Another example where I can exhibit my competency is working in a metadata analyst capacity that allowed me to apply standards to a metadata schema in order to generate a controlled vocabulary system at Shutterfly.
Justification of the Evidence
Evidence #1: Using Webdata Pro by creating a user-generated wiki based database
In a team effort, we used a web-based database management and information retrieval system to create a database and generated records so that users can search for information. In this project, we made a database of recipes where target users can search for recipes based on type of meal or main ingredient or cost, etc. In the process of making this database, we also considered the types of scenarios and queries users would pose on the database. From this experience, I was able to reflect on the “back end” of a user interface by anticipating how users might engage with a search engine. By creating rules for each field and building an index of key terms(a controlled vocabulary), these basic principles of organizing information demonstrate my ability to apply best practices in both physical and virtual environments.
Evidence #2: Using the DAM(Digital Asset Management) system to organize metadata
In a 6 month internship at Shutterfly, I worked as a Metadata Manager Assistant and used Adobe’s Digital Asset Management system and had administrator permission to apply metadata schema to seasonal photos and products. The general workflow of each project was to upload folders from the Creative team(ie photographers, designers, and other metadata interns) based on what the focus of the project might be. For example for Christmas or holiday photos, I would first upload all of the MIME types(images, tiff files, png, jpg, etc) into the DAM and apply metadata standards such as Type of asset(ie photos, plates, calendars, mugs, cards, etc) and add tags about the product(ie holiday, winter, family, nature, animals, etc). Due to proprietary restrictions and because I had to sign an NDA through the staffing agency I’m unable to share the various projects I worked on in specific detail(especially now that all of my images are live on the commercial site). However, I have provided a couple of screenshots of the software that I am familiar. Evidence 2a outlines how a product might be categorized based on metadata standards. And Evidence 2b shows what an asset with tags might look like for a photo of a person. This internship has prepared me to organize information using metadata standards the demonstrate my ability to use principles of classification and metadata schemas in a virtual environment.
Conclusion
Though librarianship has evolved significantly in the last decade or two, the principles and standards of cataloging, controlled vocabulary systems, cataloging systems, and metadata systems are still relevant and necessary. My plan is to learn more about classification schemes and encoding standards that extend beyond creating metadata schema for MIME files. One of the other internships I had was working in a map library and I plan to take courses on ArcGIS metadata as well as ISO metadata standards to explore this as a future specialized career path in librarianship.