Titles and Subs
December 28, 2007 12:46 PM Subscribe
What's the difference between Title and Subject when it comes to metadata? And how do you use Title and Subtitle? Best practices, please...
In MS Word, and other apps, the document properties include "Title" and "Subject". How do you use these fields and why?
Furthermore, in MS Word (again), there is a Title style and a Subtitle style, and most business documents tend to have consequently a Title and a Subtitle. How do you use these and why?
Imagine, for example, a Project Plan for Project X. What's the title, subject, subtitle, etc? Forgetting styles (or not), what does your title page of the document look like, and why? Is it Project X / Project Plan or Project Plan / Project X or what?
Please provide other examples to support your approach, including such banal things as Document Reference numbers, etc.
In MS Word, and other apps, the document properties include "Title" and "Subject". How do you use these fields and why?
Furthermore, in MS Word (again), there is a Title style and a Subtitle style, and most business documents tend to have consequently a Title and a Subtitle. How do you use these and why?
Imagine, for example, a Project Plan for Project X. What's the title, subject, subtitle, etc? Forgetting styles (or not), what does your title page of the document look like, and why? Is it Project X / Project Plan or Project Plan / Project X or what?
Please provide other examples to support your approach, including such banal things as Document Reference numbers, etc.
Response by poster: @kables: good answer
@everyone else: what about in the context of MS Word properties, where what the Dublin Core would call "Subject", MS Word calls "Keywords". So what were MS thinking we would use "Subject" for? Were they thinking?
posted by blue_wardrobe at 4:45 PM on December 28, 2007
@everyone else: what about in the context of MS Word properties, where what the Dublin Core would call "Subject", MS Word calls "Keywords". So what were MS thinking we would use "Subject" for? Were they thinking?
posted by blue_wardrobe at 4:45 PM on December 28, 2007
Actually, subject and keywords are very different things.
In the most formal context, subjects are generally doled out according to some classification system. Subjects also tend to lend themselves towards increasing granularity. So you can talk about the subject of "Economics", then "International Economics", then "Economic Crises", then "Argentine economic crisis." Each of these is a subject but gets increasingly specific in scope. Given a subject, you will be given a specific area of the library where your book would be located.
On the other hand, keywords tend not to be related to scope but rather to issues, topics, or facts contained in the document. They also rely less on a classification system, partially because they are used not to organize the document, but rather to make it easier to search for it, but also because this allows for terms that have not yet been given a place in a formal classification system or taxonomy.
I'm not library science expert (although I'd love to have gone for library science, in retrospect) but my perception is that subjects are becoming less used and less important than keywords in the digital realm, for the exact reasons keywords are different than subjects: most people use search to find information online, and information is changing too rapidly to wait for formal taxonomies to adjust to them.
Enter folksonomy in the form of tagging. Tagging is an example of keywords taking over the role of subjects. But anyone using MetaFilter knows the drawback of folksonomy: is a recipe listed under cooking, recipe, food, or foods? This is what you lose out on by not using a formal taxonomy. Of course, if the user looking for the document doesn't know the formal taxonomy (or can't figure out the rules to it) then it is just as bad. This is why standardized subject organization like Dewey decimal system (which, despite the current fad towards LOC is my personal favorite) and Library of Congress are so important in libraries.
I expect someone with a real lib sci degree and/or an expert in the field (Jessamyn) can offer some more weight to an answer your question.
posted by Deathalicious at 7:36 PM on December 28, 2007
In the most formal context, subjects are generally doled out according to some classification system. Subjects also tend to lend themselves towards increasing granularity. So you can talk about the subject of "Economics", then "International Economics", then "Economic Crises", then "Argentine economic crisis." Each of these is a subject but gets increasingly specific in scope. Given a subject, you will be given a specific area of the library where your book would be located.
On the other hand, keywords tend not to be related to scope but rather to issues, topics, or facts contained in the document. They also rely less on a classification system, partially because they are used not to organize the document, but rather to make it easier to search for it, but also because this allows for terms that have not yet been given a place in a formal classification system or taxonomy.
I'm not library science expert (although I'd love to have gone for library science, in retrospect) but my perception is that subjects are becoming less used and less important than keywords in the digital realm, for the exact reasons keywords are different than subjects: most people use search to find information online, and information is changing too rapidly to wait for formal taxonomies to adjust to them.
Enter folksonomy in the form of tagging. Tagging is an example of keywords taking over the role of subjects. But anyone using MetaFilter knows the drawback of folksonomy: is a recipe listed under cooking, recipe, food, or foods? This is what you lose out on by not using a formal taxonomy. Of course, if the user looking for the document doesn't know the formal taxonomy (or can't figure out the rules to it) then it is just as bad. This is why standardized subject organization like Dewey decimal system (which, despite the current fad towards LOC is my personal favorite) and Library of Congress are so important in libraries.
I expect someone with a real lib sci degree and/or an expert in the field (Jessamyn) can offer some more weight to an answer your question.
posted by Deathalicious at 7:36 PM on December 28, 2007
As for Title and Subtitle, this is more straightforward. The title can be a very brief description of the paper's subject matter (different than the subject, sort of) whereas the subtitle can hint at your argument. So, to use the Argentine Economic Crisis as an example:
Title: The Argentine Economic Crisis
Subtitle: A case of contagion?
Subject: Economic Crises -- Latin America
Keywords: Argentina, Monetary Crisis, Minsky
posted by Deathalicious at 7:43 PM on December 28, 2007
Title: The Argentine Economic Crisis
Subtitle: A case of contagion?
Subject: Economic Crises -- Latin America
Keywords: Argentina, Monetary Crisis, Minsky
posted by Deathalicious at 7:43 PM on December 28, 2007
This thread is closed to new comments.
Example:
Title: The Bible
Subject(s): religion, history, philosophy
This is a simplification of a potentially very complex discussion. Start with Dublin Core as a base set of metadata elements, and go from there.
posted by kables at 1:28 PM on December 28, 2007