Metadata is Digital Black Gold

Last night I made a comment on Twitter that metadata is digital black gold. It was in relation to comments around spying and privacy issues. It was a bit of a throw away comment but at the same time a serious one.

Funnily enough once I had turned in for the night I couldn’t get that image of digital black gold out of my head. It rolled and rolled around looking for context and meaning. This is me getting that down the morning after looking for that point I wanted to make.

Gold is a precious commodity. Mostly it’s not useful, just used as a measure of wealth. That may be a use but it’s an abstract one. Oil, when we (as in humanity), realised how useful it could be was described as black gold. Finding oil made you wealthy and it was dug out of the ground. As a commodity it is more useful than gold. Indeed the application of oil based technologies have revolutionised the world and led to a number of conflicts.

Slowly I think many people are coming to realise that metadata is a digital black gold. As a commodity it is becoming more and more precious, and its application is starting to revolutionise this digital age. The big difference is that everybody creates it, intentionally and unintentionally. You don’t dig metadata out of the ground. Although some folks like to go metadata mining.

As a librarian committed to open access, I create metadata. I let it out into the world free. How does this creation tie into metadata being digital black gold? I’m creating digital oil to lubricate the internet and giving it away free. Mostly it’s not going to be valuable as a commodity except in the research process.

But there is a class of metadata that we can create that others will want to commercialise. This is around personal information. This is the metadata we create when we post online, the metadata we create when we make a phone call, the metadata we create when we log into a site. This is the real digital black oil. And now we are starting to see just how valuable that metadata is and the lengths some folks will take to capture it.

As a society we need to be careful about how we handle that metadata. How right were those futurists who feared us being reduced to a number? And how wrong – we aren’t one number, no we are a complex set of metadata points cross referenced across the database of the world.

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A Good Moment: Getting More Stuff Out There – Spike and The Student Magazines of Victoria University

One of the elements I really like in my position is seeing new resources go up on the web.

Fifty years of Victoria University’s The Spike student magazine is now online. The University Library has digitised the complete run of The Spike Victoria College Review which ran continuously from 1902 – 1949, then in 1954, 1957 and 1964.

From the editorial in Issue one:

“We be wayfarers together, O Students, treading the same thorny paths of Studentdom, laughing at the same professorial jokes, grieving in common over the same unpalatable “swot,” playing the same games, reading the same indigestible books. Let us also pause for a few moments together and stretch out a hand of welcome to a small white stranger, that has come amongst us with little preliminary under the name of The Spike. Hast thou The Spike, fellow-student? If not, I pray thee make all haste to procure it, less worse things befall thee, and thou art impaled on its venomous point.”

The Spike is a fascinating view into student life at the University during the first half of last century. In particular we have found some interesting and moving pieces published during the World Wars. With the coming centenary of WWI in 2014 approaching these will be invaluable for researchers.

From the October 1916 The Spike in Extracts From Soldiers Letters;

Wellington,21st September, 1916.

Dear “Spike,”-

Extracts from Alan MacDougall’s letters will be of abiding interest to his old friends. These will be pardoned for thinking that when he died, Victoria College lost its most perfect student. In tribute to him, will you publish some extracts from certain recent letters of his which tell of the work he was engaged in and how he viewed it, and which unconsciously body forth those qualities of perception, faith, humour, generosity and noble courage which will keep his memory ever green in the hearts of those who loved him. At the end, with his friends in the line stricken down, he was lonely; and we do well to believe that he has passed into an immortal Fellowship.

I am, etc.,

D.S.S.

“We are well fed and clad; frequently well housed in billets, as now, and always pretty happy. It’s just as well to try and be happy in the face of the ever present possibilities of this life. The way we look at the facts is that if a Jack Johnson or whizz-bang is addressed to you, it will find you. The goods are always delivered-fatalism of a cheery sort. How one finds out the real men in this sort of work! the cool quiet ones, the gasbags, the dare-devils, the paralytic, the shirkers. From what I know of other battalions I conclude that we are to be reckoned fortunate beyond most in our personnel, both officers and men. We trust each other and we shall back each other.”

The Spike joins Hilltop in the collection of Victoria student magazines found in the NZeTC .

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Conservatively yours,

I feel that I must give you fair warning. Today’s post is going to dwell on one of those twin banes of conversation, politics.

I describe myself as a liberal conservative; centre right, with a strong libertarian streak. I believe in a small government, individual responsibility, and in simpler cheaper legislation and regulation.  I also happen to be passionate believer in the Public Library system.

By now you may be thoroughly confused. Sometimes I am as well.

So how can I, who believes in lower rates, focused local government and a tighter definition of “core services” defend what many would consider a luxury? It all comes down to how you view rates and taxes. It also comes down to what sort of community you wish to live in.

Many of my would be compatriots on the political right view rates and taxes as theft, a necessary  evil that should be paid, but cut to the bare bones. I view rates and taxes more like the body corporate fees one might pay in an apartment. If we didn’t pay them the walls of our “building” would fall down and then where would our investment be?

How is the public library a “core service”? How does it help prevent our “building” falling down? If you consider the roads etc as the internal, then libraries are part of the external. On a purely superficial level they help show a community that is proud and vibrant, and as such they help attract investment and continued involvement within the community.

I don’t think it incongruous to talk about the social good the Public Library provides. The Library provides education, and entertainment at a relatively free level. It seems self evident to me that if your citizens are happy, educated and entertained then there are going to be fewer problems, that a bit of judicious spending on social services should lead to less crime and policing lessening that burden on the tax payer.

That’s my defence, what’s yours?

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