Europeana and Metadata

First I wanted to share an article about how journalists are viewing Europeana. Since our discussion a few weeks ago,I’ve been thinking about all the reasons why we didn’t like it and what really makes a good digital library and what makes a digital library painful to use. And do people outside the library/information even care about the nuances?

http://www.ejc.net/magazine/article/why_the_europeana_initiative_is_still_important/

But since, like my group mate Laura, I’m also focusing on really good examples of metadata. i wanted to share these as well.

For a sneak peek of my presentation, the National Library of Australia’s search called Trove, has most of the features we have discussed in class. A single search, facets, amazing metadata, linked information all in one place.

http://trove.nla.gov.au/?q=

On a similar note, I just heard about the Tufts Digital Library last night in my International Documents class and I’m impressed and completely overwhelmed at the same time.

http://dl.tufts.edu/

i think that this is a good example of having exhaustive metadata (full-text capability), but not having a proper way to display the results. While Trove, presents much more information, it’s organized so much better than the traditional way Tufts does it.