On Content, Conciseness and Metadata

Accessories are kind of like web content – too much of a good thing, is just too much. As Coco Chanel once said regarding accessories, “always remove one thing before going out the door.” Aaron Schmidt’s new post on Library Journal is built on the same premise. In The Benefits of Less: The User Experience, Schmidt encourages care, precision and even minimalism for library website content. Selective services and features should be managed with simplicity. Too much content requires too much maintenance and in turn, complex and unwieldy site architecture all contributing to users experiencing that needle in the haystack phenomenon.

In a quasi related post, Troy Allen highlights The Importance of Metadata in Content Management. Whether the content you are organizing are interoffice emails or images of aardvarks, the application of appropriate metadata aids in search and retrieval. This article provides a list of common metadata standards to use with content ranging from the arts to biology. Allen also provides some nice examples.