Summary and Setup

Prerequisite

This lesson is being developed specifically for researchers in the humanities and cultural studies and designed for learners with no prior experience.

This lesson is developed as an introduction to the meaning of data and metadata in the Humanities. Learners will get familiar with concepts of data and metadata as well as formats such as XML and JSON and metadata standards.

Objectives

  • Providing a basic explanation of the theoretical and methodological implications of working with data.
  • Differentiate between analogue data, digitized data, and born-digital data.
  • Understand how data is categorized, collected, and utilized within humanities research.
  • Explore the implications of data types for research methods and outcomes.
  • Understand metadata basics.
  • Differentiate metadata from data.
  • Differentiate the major types of metadata.
  • Apply metadata concepts to practical challenges.
  • Recognize the role of metadata in the humanities.
  • Write and structure data and metadata in basic XML and JSON format.
  • Explain the terms metadata standard, metadata schema and metadata model.
  • Name the main concepts of the minimum record recommendation, the Dublin Core metadata standard as well as the METS standard.
  • Organize simple metadata within Dublin Core and METS.
  • Write triple for RDF schema.
  • Identify the main elements of an XML Schema and write a valid XML file based on a simple XML Schema.

Data Sets

Download the data zip file and unzip it to your Desktop. Download also the lba_cao_exercise.xsd.

This lesson utilizes slightly modified sample from:

  • Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Open Access Initiative dataset. The original dataset is available as an Open Access CSV and is provided under the Creative Commons Zero license.
  • The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) Collection datasets. The original datasets are also available under the CCO licence.
  • A xsd file as a draft for the Marburger Urkundenrepositorium - Datenbank des CAO und LBA, kindly provided by the author Mathias Gutenbrunner, University Library Marburg.

Software Setup

Details

You need a spreasheet software like Excel or Libre Calc as well as a text editor like Notepad, Vim or Kate. Advanced XML functionality within the text editor is not required.

If you have installed MS Office including Excel you can use this spreadsheet software. Otherwise you can install the open source software Libre Office and use Libre Office Calc.
You can use the default text editor or install for example Windows Notepad from the store.

If you have installed MS Office for Mac including Excel you can use this spreadsheet software. Otherwise you can install the open source software Libre Office and use Libre Office Calc. You can use a text editor such as TextEdit or any other text editor you like.

You can install the open source software Libre Office and use Libre Office Calc or any other spreadsheet software you like. You can use the default text editor or install for example Vim.