We might call the second type 'value-added metadata', that is, description and arrangement schemes imposed by an archivist, other records expert, or user, or automatically captured and repurposed trace metadata. Such metadata describes the object in hand, augments what is not self-evident of the circumstances of its creation and handling with the intent of making apparent not only its evidential aspects but also the information it contains "about particular persons, situations, events, conditions, problems, materials, and properties in relation to which the question of action comes up" (Schellenberg, 1956). It makes the object more usable for subsequent users, who may bring different backgrounds from those of the creators of the object, and who may wish to use the objects for completely different purposes than those for which they were designed. For example, a handwritten ledger kept by a clerk of courts listing applications of Intent to Naturalize would likely have an individual entry corresponding to each application and listing the applicant's name, city or county of current residence, date of birth, date and port of arrival in the country and a code linking the entry to the Intent to Naturalize form. The primary access point to the ledger would be the date when the application was made and the ledger would list the applications chronologically in the order received. A genealogist trying to find an entry for an ancestor in these ledgers (and thereby, to retrieve the relevant application form) would need to know the date upon which the application would have been filed an unlikely data point for the genealogist to know. Value-added description, therefore, might consist of abstracting the ledger to create a database index to the ledger that would permit random searching on any of the data elements contained in the ledger entries as well as the ability to compile various statistical reports on application rates and applicant demographics. With a continuum approach, which "maps the creation of records as traces of actions, events and participants, their capture into systems [broadly defined]", their organization into an archive and their pluralization beyond the confines of their original creator and the archive (McKemmish, 2016, p. 139), both of these types of metadata are created at all points in the life of the object. With the life cycle approach, value-added archival metadata would usually be created post-archival accession. Beyond the obvious temporal differences in when the metadata are created in these two approaches, there is an important qualitative difference between value-added data created close to the time when the action with which it is associated is performed (e.g., creation, active bureaucratic use or migration) and that created later, sometimes many years later, without firsthand knowledge of those actions but with the benefit of hindsight. Although the latter value-added metadata are still created with reference to the object of description itself, they are also based upon the archivist's assessments of the past and with knowledge of intervening events that might cast the resources in a somewhat different light from that in which they were perceived originally or at an earlier date. Again, it would be interesting to contemplate this phenomenon with reference to that of second-hand knowledge as described by Wilson (1986) with reference to bibliographic description. It should also be noted that in legal theories of evidence, the closer in time to an action that a record is created, the more likely it is to be reliable. By implication, this also would be the case for those metadata that are essential to supporting the reliability of that record. Ultimately, even in a life cycle approach, however, these types are non-exclusive because, depending upon one's standpoint, all metadata could be read as 'metadata as trace' in the sense that it is always evidence of what has happened to the object over time and of how it has been interpreted and valued. This discussion also neglects a third, less tangible category of use and interpretation metadata-that which is brought to bear by a user (e.g., scholar, genealogist, lawyer, artist) in locating and using or exploiting an object in the form of pre-existing knowledge, purpose, and intellectual, ethical, political or artistic stance. These kinds of categorizations are somewhat crude ways of conceptualizing metadata that better support practical than philosophical understanding. From a more conceptual perspective, can we identify any other characteristics that might help us to apprehend the nature and role of metadata? The following discussion suggests a few areas for further contemplation: Metadata is what makes something a record: Fundamentally, because they are co-constructions, any discussion of the nature of metadata requires an understanding of the nature of a record as a conceptual and juridical as well as an information object, and vice versa. The circular definition of metadata as 'data about data' that was often cited in other information fields has proven to be an overly reductivist way to talk about the kinds of highly contingent objects with which the body of archival and recordkeeping theory and practice grapples. A record can convey information, but its primary distinguishing characteristic is its evidential capacity to bear witness, formally or informally. How well it does that depends on how much metadata is associated with it, as well as how trustworthy that metadata is. Without metadata associated with its various contexts, there may be a poor record, or even no record at all, merely discrete pieces and points of data. In other words, a record must have metadata, and the sufficiency and reliability of that metadata speak to the quality of the record in terms of its comprehensiveness and trustworthiness. Metadata can be a record: Conceptually, metadata is a paradox, for besides serving as a running commentary on, and validator and representation of the record(s), it can also be construed as a record in its own right (at various levels of completeness and granularity) and will have its own associated metadata. By extension, metadata as records need their own metadata not only to be reliable, but also to be understandable and referential. For example, embedded in the wall of the entrance to one of the Oxford colleges is a plain concrete slab which reads as follows "This Foundation Stone was Laid by Her Majesty the Queen 2 May 1968). In this case, explanatory metadata disambiguating to which Queen it refers, and linking the placing of the foundation stone to the broader history of the college, has been presumed to be unnecessary since it will instead be contributed by the contextual knowledge brought by the reader of the stone. As already discussed, explications of metadata in archives and recordkeeping often fail to take into account the metadata that users bring or need to bring to objects in their sensemaking process, and such metadata may not always be relied upon to exist, or to travel well across time and knowledge bases. For example, a visitor from another country and in a future time may not easily be able to figure out that it was British Queen Elizabeth II who laid the foundation stone. Metadata for films provide us with a rather different example of meaningfulness and understandings-viewers are expected to understand how the ordering of actor credits can indicate such things as the standing and pay of actors. Uncredited cameos in cast lists may suggest a lack of confidence in the quality of the film or their own performance, on the part of the unlisted actor. Metadata can and must be used to demonstrate the fixity of records even while the archives in liquid times 220 anne j. gilliland 'the wink that's worth a thousand words': a contemplation on the nature of metadata and metadata practices in the archival world 221

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Jaarboeken Stichting Archiefpublicaties | 2017 | | pagina 112