Reading thoughts, 10/1

Endnote:
*bibliographic software tool
*you can sort and format your references in several different ways
*create custom groups
*"online search" - search remote databases for articles from within Endnote
*"cite while you write" - key feature of Endnote.

Dublin Core:
*The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative is an international effort to foster a consensus across disciplines for discovery oriented description of diverse resources.
*RDF: stands for resource description framework, the metadata architecture for the web
*in a medium as big as the world wide web, you cannot rely on the shared cultural understanding of concepts of creditorship. Precision is a key facet of metadata.

Metadata:
*literally means "data about data"
*the construct has existed as long as humans have organized info, it's just digital now.
*content, context, structure
*metadata terms I've been using in Pitt Partners: VRA Core, ULAN, CCO, TGN, XML
*so it's very popular in the art history field
*no single standard that can describe all things
*crowdsourcing and user-generated metadata has started to arise
*metadata is not static, it will continue to accrue throughout the life of an object

Muddiest points, 9/24

I felt pretty good about the database lecture. My only question is why do you really need to query databases? It seems to me (as a heavy Excel user) that you could find the information you need by selective searches/sorts of the spreadsheet. Like with the example of finding the lines in the spreadsheet with a certain vendor ID, wouldn't it be faster to just sort the table by vendor numbers?

Readings thoughts for 9/24

* Database : organized collection of data, typically organized in a helpful way.
* Database systems are managed by quality (accuracy, availability, usability).
* Virtually every technology uses databases.
* A database must be functional to qualify as a database management system (DBMS).
* SQL = the language of databases. It's not the most elegant, but it's cheap and easy to use.
* Database technology has kept current with technology in general.
* DBs work within other computer systems. An attempt in the 70s and 80s tried to build stand-alone DBMS but they were expensive and awkward.
* There is so many different kinds of DBs. I had no idea!
* Entity relationship model (ER model) : an abstract way to describe a database.
* Proposed by Peter Chen in 1976.
* Entities : things capable of independent existence with unique IDs. AKA nouns.
* Relationships : connect entities to each other. AKA verbs.
* Must be structured data (semi-structured data won't work)
* 3 normal forms : no repeating elements; no partial dependencies on a concatenated key; no dependencies on non-key attributes.

Muddiest points, week 3 (Multimedia)

I am curious why color representation on computer screens uses red/green/blue, when printers and other media use cyan/magenta/yellow/black. Why is there a difference?

Are there really "frames" in digital video? I thought frames were an analog concept, where a movie camera took actual photographic images at 24 frames/sec rate. Is it a terminology thing, or do digital video cameras use frames anyway?