Metadata
The Delaware Art Museum is home to Rossetti’s Mnemosyne, a Pre-Raphaelite homage to the ancient Greek personification of memoria. Depicted with an arresting gaze and draped in the deep green of eternal vitality, Mnemosyne holds a burning lamp in her right hand while her left hand touches a lamp set next to a golden pansy and a spray of yew. These flora represent the marriage of mortal knowledge and immortality, the essence of memoria (Piasecka, 2014). The ancient Greeks recognized Mnemosyne as the goddess of memory and wisdom, the inventor and retainer of language, mother of the nine muses; she was creator of the arts and sciences. Although a rich history established this precept as the fourth canon of rhetoric, memoria has suffered an inelegant death at the hands of scholars who have spent time dividing memoria into other disciplines beyond rhetoric. Separated from its place of significance in the rhetorical canon, memoria has emerged in a present form as metadata, a conception of collecting and remembering data, not unlike the descriptions of artificial memory provided by ancient scholars of rhetoric.
Metadata is a mass noun, referring to “a set of data that describes and gives information about other data” (Oxford Dictionary of English). Metadata linguistically builds off the etymology of datum, the giving of information, from the Greek “I give”/dídōmi (δίδωμι). Being data about data, metadata provides information to describe given or available information. The present use of metadata replicates the ancient concept of memory storage with different technology, serving as a knowledge bank that relies less on the limits of human memory, and perhaps deceptively having a closer resemblance to original data. Reflective of memoria being a wellspring of invention, metadata acts as a container or holding area for gathered knowledge, detailing the past and describing intellectual futurity.
Scholars credit the poet Simonides of Ceos as the inventor of memoria, who first described the use of a mind palace, or, the method of loci, irrevocably attaching memoria to mnemonic exercise (Clark, 1957). Cicero’s Ad Herennium suggested that memoria is valuable because it builds a treasury of rhetorical knowledge for both rhetor and audience, progressively leading to a future in which both parties have access to material for knowledge creation (Clark, 1957). For ancient rhetoricians, formulaic memory was a starting point for the process of invention, storing depths of content within the soul for irreproducible revelations and insight into humanity (Kennedy, 2009). The complexities of memoria lead Aristotle to write his treatise on memory, De Memoria et Reminiscientia, in which he connected the power of the past with present consciousness implying the understood “link between memory and identity” (Kennedy, 2009). Quintilian worked to systematize memoria as a formula with practical applications for speech delivery, allowing a speaker to either memorize the words or substance of a speech by heart. The turn of memoria from a concept of memory to a clever apparatus lead to its downfall. The characterization of memoria as formula rendered it synonymous with memorization and cheap regurgitation.
Metadata first appeared outside of memoria in 280 BCE in the form of a card catalogue system. Zenodotus, the first librarian at the Library of Alexandria, developed a system of categorizing scrolls with “a small dangling tag,” opening up opportunities to classify and intentionally locate knowledge (Beck & Bishop, 2016). Modern literature and art historians John Beck and Ryan Bishop connect this early system to the present, writing that metadata "has always facilitated both classification and information workflow management” (Beck & Bishop). During the era of Zenodotus, Callimachus served as a chief librarian and developed a more extensive indexing system. Apparently unprecedented in its creation, the indexing system was called the Pinakes, or “Tables of Persons Eminent in Every Branch of Learning Together With a List of Their Writings” (Wright, 2007). This massive bibliography contained 120 scrolls, detailing one-fifth of the library collection. Callimachus wrote profiles for every author to preface every catalogue entry, thus creating descriptive metadata (Phillips, 2010). As the Library of Alexandria eventually acquisitioned over a half million scrolls, this cataloguing system collapsed into a dual tiered system according to popularity (Wright, 2007). When the Library was destroyed, so were these early forms of metadata, along with the inherent limitations they contained.
Modern day metadata reflects the seemingly disparate traditions in its preservation of memory and creation of meaningful classification systems for ease of access. Philip Bagley, in Extension of Programming Language Concepts, was the first to apply the word metadata to a collection of data content in 1968. Bagley described metadata as “a second data element which represents data ‘about’ the first data element” (Bagley, 1968). Bagley is mostly referring to structural metadata, or, data about the containers of data. Due to his focus on reducing complexity in programming languages, Bagley centered his understanding of metadata on structural data. The definition of metadata has expanded since the 1960s, with at least three types of metadata in common use. Different frameworks for metadata are often complementary to each other, corresponding with varying levels of emphasis on memory, organization, or process (Cornell). These categories are known as descriptive, structural, and administrative metadata. Descriptive metadata deals with representing complex data in a more wieldable description. Structural metadata deals with order and organization of an object, documenting the specific configurations of information. Administrative metadata may describe the origin or provenance of an object, perhaps including specifics of acquisition or digitization process (Pomerantz, 2015).
Central within the etymology of metadata is the idea of access and provenance, dealing with the given beginning and end locations of data. In the digital age, memory is usually organized into accessible resources. The World Wide Web Consortium defines the utility of modern metadata, noting that “Metadata is a powerful tool that can be used for [description] as well as associating alternate versions of Web content to each other… [allowing] users to locate specific information they need or prefer” (W3C). Richard Pearce-Moses, past president of the Society of American Archivists, once stated that “archivists keep records that have enduring value as reliable memories of the past” (Pearce-Morris, 2006). The conception of information having enduring value largely depends on its state of preservation and who has governed the discursive metadata. The perceived value of an object will eventually impact the quality of its associated metadata.
The apparent efforts to accurately describe data creates an equitable image of metadata; however, metadata is an amoral method of controlling information and knowledge. In the digital humanities, metadata is being interpreted as a space for decolonization and a site for centering marginalized stories. Colonial metadata is typically concerned with enduring value, demonstrating the necessity of decolonial paradigms which seek to ascribe value to historically Othered information. Digital archivist Jarrett Drake explains that archives are never neutral as “they are the creation of human beings, who have politics in their nature” (Drake, in NDSA, 2017). Those who create metadata have a strong influence over the historical record, indicating the continuing stay of metadata as a powerful rhetorical apparatus for invention.
While education systems may be swiftly changed, metadata lasts much longer and has a powerful grip on future knowledge creation (White, 2018). Humanities scholar Hollie C. White writes that the intention of metadata and other knowledge organization systems is not to exclude, but to “describe and create access to materials” (White, 2018). In spite of the possible good intentions, metadata from its inception was controlled by cisgendered, Western men, and their views on knowledge preservation have remained largely unchecked. White writes that as a result, “certain users and cultural perspectives are left out” (White, 2018). It is well documented that the Other is not just left out, but violently erased from the collection of human memory.
Digital humanities scholars are seeking to recover histories through transformation in the metadata, nudging the discourse surrounding the first level of data. Jessica Marie Johnson, a professor of history and African studies, describes the reconstructive work being done with metadata involving the Black diaspora. Johnson writes that “black digital practice is the interface by which black freedom struggles challenge reproduction of black death and commodification, countering the presumed neutrality of the digital” (Johnson, 2018). This scene of decolonization involves Black subjects creating the metadata, “in order to hack their way into systems… thus living where they were ‘never meant to survive’” (Johnson, 2018). Scholarly projects, such as Slave Voyages, have reconceptualized how information databases are understood and displayed, allowing for deeper understandings of disaggregated history. Data collection can open itself in this way to liberating data rather than creating new containers for data to live.
After its origination in the elite libraries of the ancient world, metadata has remained in the hands of those with the power to remember and control. The future of metadata will likely include a proliferation of oppositional views and standards to advance the cause of liberation. As an application of recent tensions surrounding data collection, a process known as More Product, Less Process (MPLP) has swept through the archives, suggesting that less processing of information leads to swifter accessibility (American Archive). MPLP does create more accessible collections, but creates a lasting impact on what data is recorded from archived materials. Less process alleviates backlog in the archive at the cost of lower preservation standards and fewer descriptive efforts. Individuals interested in accessing materials face a stripped-down finding aid that may obscure important information, yet the information may not have been made public if not for archival flexibility in the process (Smithsonian).
Metadata strives to be as close to the actual data as possible, but the interference of human interpretation will always reduce the accuracy of description. As a departure from the interpretive methods of data collection, management scientists Sue Holwell and Peter Checkland countered the faulty “giving” of data with capta, the “taking” of data. Derived from the Latin word capere (‘to take’), capta provides a description for the process of selecting, consciously understanding, and creating data, followed by meaning attribution (Holwell and Checkland, 1998). Johanna Drucker writes that capta is the “systematic expression of information understood as constructed, as phenomena perceived according to principles of interpretation” (Drucker, 2011). The digital humanities, Drucker argues, “acknowledges the situated, partial, and constitutive character of knowledge production, the recognition that knowledge is constructed, taken, not simply given as a natural representation of pre-existing fact” (Drucker, 2011). Utilizing capta as a pedagogy of information collection implies a conscious awareness of the limitations to expressing and representing knowledge.
Dismantling the power structures embedded within traditional metadata must include bringing the community into the archive for the generation of knowledge. The digital humanities involve outreach, bringing metadata out of internal databases or physical libraries and back into public memory. Additionally, communities are adopting metadata as a method of framing and cataloguing the data of colonial violence. Participatory archives are being created, introducing methods that “include crowdsourcing description, such as enlisting community members for... contributing to making sense of what is preserved” (Becerra-Licha, 2017). A People’s Archive of Police Violence in Cleveland, the South Asian American Digital Archive, the Race & Racism Project at the University of Richmond, and Documenting Ferguson are all examples of participatory archives created through individuals documenting their own stories with the aid of community developed metadata frameworks (this is more ‘additional info’ than citation, so maybe a footnote: Archives Next). Jarrett Drake explains that “traditional metadata” created by individuals leads to a monograph, but community usage appears different (Jarrett Drake). “Maybe community usage requires different principles — less emphasis on citation and disambiguation and more emphasis of integration into people’s every day lives” (Jarrett Drake). Control of metadata belongs in the hands of the creators of information, not in the monolithic imaginations of colonial researchers.
The site of the Pinakes would be destroyed by the Roman oppressor, sending centuries of metadata collection and the knowledge of the ancient world up in flames. With the same exacting violence, Othered individuals have been omitted from metadata by oppressive knowledge systems which dictate the limits of enduring value. With the advent of digital technologies and new ways to understand knowledge, vanquished systems of knowing are constantly being restored, replaced, and reinvented. The future of metadata is fused to memoria now more than ever before: as Mnemosyne is goddess of memory and mother of the muses, so metadata is the rhetorical backbone to cultural knowledge retention. The radical shifts of metadata offer endless possibilities and sites of invention and inspiration, each line of data a post-Greek muse of liberation.
Works Cited
(2010). metadata. In Stevenson, A. (Ed.), Oxford Dictionary of English: Oxford University Press. Retrieved from http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199571123.001.0001/m_en_gb0514170.
(2019). datum. OED Online, Oxford University Press. Retrieved from www.oed.com/view/Entry/47434.
Beck, J., & Bishop, R. (Eds.). (2016). Cold War legacies: systems, theory, aesthetics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Clark, D. L. (1957). Rhetoric in Greco-Roman Education. New York: Columbia University Press. 107 — 108.
Checkland, P., & Holwell, S. (1998). Information, Systems, and Information Systems : Making Sense of the Field. Chichester: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
Cooper, M., Kirkpatrick, A., O Connor, J. Understanding WCAG 2.0: A guide to understanding and implementing Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0. W3C Working Group Note, 7 October 2016.
Kennedy, T. M. (2009). Reclaiming Memoria for Writing Pedagogies: Toward a Theory of Rhetorical Memory (Order No. 3350242). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.
Johnson, J. M. (2018). Markup Bodies: Black [Life] Studies and Slavery [Death] Studies at the Digital Crossroads. Social Text, 36(4), 137th ser., 57-79. doi:doi.org/10.1215/01642472-7145658
Philips, Heather, "The Great Library of Alexandria?" (2010). Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal). 417. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac/417
Piasecka, A. (2014). Towards Creative Imagination in Victorian Literature. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 86.
Pomerantz, J. (2015). Metadata. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.
Wright, A. (2008). Glut: mastering information through the ages. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press.
