The Wikipedia Database article didn't clarify for me what exactly a database is. Now, unless I'm mistaken, I think a database just serves a repository for information within a computer. It's where files, information and data are stored. But then I think, "can it be that simple?" I realize the construction/maintenance of a database isn't, but right now I'm just trying to be sure I understand the purpose of it. Often times if I don't know why something does what it does , I don't care to much about the background because I don't even know why it's there in the first place! I do use databases all of the time at work and do believe that they are digital filing cabinets.
Ahh, Metadata. Metadata is extremely important to the organizational world, but whenever I hear the word, I just cringe. I feel it's a bit overblown. As it simply states in Gilliland's article, metadata is "literally data about data". Maybe because it's starting to fall onto the technical side of library science, but I find it a dry topic not exciting at all. Doesn't it all just boil down to one "thing" being used to represent and/or build a path to that "thing" or similar "thing" within that family of "things"? Sorry to use "thing", but the word document gets tiresome after awhile and I don't think I'm in the camp that feels a document can be anything.
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I felt the same way reading the article about databases. I couldn't understand the difference between network models and hierarchical models because I didn't have a good basic understanding of what a database actually is! It seems like it jumped right into the technological specifics before providing a good basis of the topic. Wikipedia is supposed to be written for anyone to read, but this seemed like just another highly specialized article.
I too will need more explanation in class about the different database models. I have always thought of them as a sort of combination of a program and a document. It's the information stored within the database, but the structure of the database also determines how you find and edit that information. I think.
Yeah, adding "meta" always makes things sound a little overly intellectualized, doesn't it? But when dealing with online library catalogues, I guess it's good to have that framework to be able to seperate content from context.
The database article left me behind as well. It felt like it was written by someone who designs or deals with databases all the time, without trying to help a layperson understand what it actually is or supposed to do. This is one of those instances where I want someone to talk to me like I'm five years old, so I'll be sure to understand what they're saying.
Rebekah,
I think for us, as future information professionals, is good to understand the principles of building databases, even though we are not qualified or knowledgebale enough to build or maintain them. I am saying this because without this knowledge, we could never fully understand how to use most efficiently a database - probably one of the core activities in our profession. Just to give you an example, depending on how the database is structured and what queries can be run, you could probably obtain (or not) information on all the magazine articles publised in 1935 by american astronomers on the Mars subject. If this query is not available, than you'd have to go step by step, which is more like a manual iteration. Or, in the worst case scenario, the query is available but you are not aware of it, so you go step by step instead of using this database feature, loosing preciuos time.
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