For many of us, school library automation is a journey, not a destination. That paraphrase of popular Zen saying aptly summarizes the findings of the 2006 School Library Journal. " We took a close look at the systems that media specialists are using, how they're using them and what librarians want from their future automation programs." While respondents were satisfied with their automation systems, we discovered that most media specialists are operating dated software programs. And although librarians were content with their current vendors, we learned that many media specialists don't know when they will be able to upgrade their systems to the lastest versions. the journey, for many is a slow one. A large number of libraries are using automation software that was installed five or more years ago, when many schools updated their hardware prior to 2000. Data from the National Center for Educational Statistics reveals that three out of four school libraries had automated by 2002. After those systems were in place, the push for newer systems slowed to a point where today only one in five respondents had purchased the lastest versions. At the same time, school technology spending in general has slowed. In the last few years, schools have been forced to spend more money on testing and remediation to meet the requirements of the No Child Left Behind legislation. That means that school technology spending has focused on reporting and tracking student achievement and not on managing media centers.

    Metadata are about data, of any sort in any media. An item of metadata may describe and individual datum, or content item, or collection of data including multiple content items. The word mata comes from the Greek, where it means 'after' or 'beyond'. In espistemology, the prefix meta- is used to mean about (its own category); thus metadata is 'data about data'. Metadata (sometimes written 'meta data') are used to facilitate the understanding , characteristics, use and management of data. The metadata required for effective data management varies with the type of data and context of use. In a library, wher the dats is the content of the titles stocked, metadata about a title would typically include a description of the content, the author, the publication date and the physical location. In the context of a camera, where the data is photographic image, metadata would typically include the date the photograph was taken and details of the camera settings. on a portable music player such and ipod, the album names, song titles and album art embedded in teh music files are used to generate the artist and song listings, and are metadata. In the context of and information system, where the data is the content of the computer files, metadata about and individual data item would typically include the name of the file, the type of file and the name of the data administrator. In the context of digital photography, the metadaata saved with a photograph identifies the camera and provides detailed informationabout its settings (lens, focal length, aperture, shutter timing, white balance.) The term was introduced intuitively, without a formal definition. Because of that, today there are various definitions. The most common one is the literal translation; metadata is data about data. Example:"12345" is data, and with no additional context is meaningless. When "12345" is given a meaningful name (metadata) of "Zip code", one can understand ( at least in the United States, and further placing " Zip code" within the context of a postal address) that "12345" refers to the General Electric plant in Schenectady, New York. As for most people the difference between data and information is merely a philosophical one of no relevance in practical use, other definitions are: Metdata is information about data, metadata is information about information and metadata contains information about that data or other data.

    When structured into a hierarchical arrangement, metadata is more properly call an ontology or schema. Both terms describe " what exists" for some purpose or to enable some action. For instance, the arrangement of subject headings in a library catalog serves not only as a guide to finding books on a particular subject in the stacks, but alos as a guide to what subjects"exists" in the library own ontology and how more specialized topics are related to or dervided from the more general subject headings. Metadata is frequently stored in a central location and used to help organizations standardize their data. This information is typically stored in a metadata registry. Usually it is not possible to distinguish between (plain) data and metadata because: something can be data and metadata at the same time. The headline od and article is both its title (metadata) and part of its text (data). Data and metadata can change their roles. A poem, as such would be regarded as data, but if there were a song that used it as lyrics, the whole poem could be attached to an audio file of the song as metadata. Thus, the labeling depends on the point of view. These condiderations appley not matter which of the above definitions is considered, except where explicit markup is used to denote what is data and what is metadata. Metadata has many different applications; this section lists sone of the most common. Metadata is used to speed up and enrich seraching for resources. Metadata can be claddified by :content.

    Although the majority of computer scientists see metadata as a chance for better interoperability, some critics argue that metadata is too expensive and time-consumming. The argument is that companies will not produce metadata without need because it costs extr money, and provate users also will not produce complex metadata because its creation is very time consuming. Metadata is to complicated. Private users will not create metadata drcause existing formats, especially MPEG-7, are too complicted. As long as there are no  automatic tools for creating metadata, it will not be created. Metadata is useless. Many of today's search engines are very efficient at finding text. Other techniques for finding pictures, videos and music (namely query-by-example) willbecome more and more powerful in the future. Thus, there is no real need for metadata.

Bibliography

Schultz-Jones, Barabara (2006). An Automation Primer for School Library Media Centers and Small Libraries. Ohio: Linworth Publishing, Inc.

American Library Assocation, Task Force on Metadata. (June 1999).

Http:www.libraries.psu.edu//jca

D.C.A., Bultermann, ( 2004). Is It Time for A Moratorium on Metadata?

Metdata Encoding and Transmission Standard. Retrieved September 28, 2006, from

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/upload_documents

Schultz-Jones, Barabara (2006). An Automation Primer for School Library Media Centers and Small Libraries. Ohio: Linworth Publishing, Inc. http://metadata.net