It is All Perspective
Two billion is a large number, regardless of whether you are referring to dollars or granules of sand. WorldCat has reported the addition of its two billionth holding. As the most comprehensive online database of resources available, this milestone gives me pause.
This impressive and somewhat daunting piece of news was found on OCLC in their post, “WorldCat database reaches 2 billion holdings.” The monumental entry was from the University of Alberta Libraries in Edmonton and was for the e-book, Evaluation of the City of Lakes Family Health Team Patient Portal Pilot Project: Final Report, published in 2012 by the Centre for Rural and Northern Health Research.
WorldCat was created in 1971 for libraries to share cataloging information from a central database. It took the OCLC cooperative almost 34 years, from August 26, 1971 to August 11, 2005, to add one billion holdings in WorldCat. It has taken just seven years and eight months to add the next billion holdings.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in taxonomies, metadata, and semantic enrichment to make your content findable.
Data About Data
The massive growth in the volume of data being created is no surprise to anyone. Most people think of documents, photos, and programs as the main contributor to this mountain of data, but don’t forget about digital video and broadcast video. For instance, it has been reported that the television program Deadliest Catch creates almost 1PB of digital film per episode.
This interesting information was found on Enterprise Storage Forum in their article, “There is No Magic Pixie Dust for Metadata.” Added to that piece of information, using higher-resolution video monitoring cameras can increase the data storage by up to 13 times. Now imagine how many public and private cameras are in use across your city, your state, … well, you get the point.
So where do we store all this data today? Tomorrow? The answer isn’t simple and it will change as the solutions evolve, but we understand it more today than yesterday. The future holds the answers.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.
Military is Addressing Big Data
Military intelligence is teaming up with the science and experts of ontology to understand the challenges and solutions for storing big data. An April 18 workshop at the University at Buffalo (UB) will explore this big data conundrum, as well as related topics.
This interesting information was found on Information Week Government in their article, “Military Intelligence Tries To Tame Data ‘Monster’.” The one-day workshop, titled “Ontologies for Information Integration,” will include presentations from experts in ontology and military intelligence. The event is held at the University of Buffalo on April 18th. You can learn more about the event and register here.
The military is no different from other organizations in relation to facing large amounts of data being created and needing space for it to exist. Maybe together they can discover some new solutions for this ongoing problem.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in taxonomies, metadata, and semantic enrichment to make your content findable.
Data in the Clouds
Data storage continues to be an issue for most organizations. This piece of information might make you feel better about your own situation. At the end of 2012, 1.3 trillion objects were stored in Amazon S3, the world’s largest object storage system. Even more so, that number is growing faster than 1 billion objects per day. InfoWorld brought this interesting information to our attention in their article, “What is object storage?”
Fortunately, object storage is more scalable than traditional file system storage because the objects are stored in a flat organization as opposed to a directory hierarchy.
Capturing digital data and storing it securely in the clouds is easier with object storage. However, it is always important to entrust your data to professionals who adhere to industry standards and uses technology that makes your content findable. After all, what is the point of having information if you can’t access it?
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.
New Patent to Enable Findability
The U.S. Patent and Trademarks Office recently notified APTARE that it has been granted a patent to create a “Catalog that Stores File System Metadata in an Optimized Manner.”
This interesting news was found on The Sacramento Bee in their article, “The United States Patent & Trademark Office has Granted APTARE a Patent For Cataloging the Metadata for Billions of Files.” This patent provides a method for the persistence and cataloging of billions of file and folder metadata contained in unstructured file systems through a highly efficient, optimized, and compact mechanism.
APTARE provides enterprise storage reporting, monitoring, and alerting software products designed to increase the efficiency of enterprise storage environments and reduce storage costs.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in taxonomies, metadata, and semantic enrichment to make your content findable.
Responding to the Indexing Need
Combining their cloud-based storage with the voice recording skills of Orange Trading Solutions, Bloomberg can now integrate voice data into the Bloomberg Vault and produce electronic records in almost real time.
Forbes brought this interesting information to our attention in their article, “Watch Your Tone — Bloomberg Vault Now Archives Voice Too.” Clients will now be able to use their current infrastructure without starting over. The Vault works with messages such as those of Microsoft Exchange, Office 365, and social media.
This new partnership with Orange Trading Solutions responds to the increased need for indexing, archiving, and accessing large amounts of data being created on a daily basis. Storage is fine, but if you can’t access the data once you have stored it, what is the point?
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.
The Need for Storage
Unstructured data is becoming more prevalent, and few organizations aren’t struggling with how to handle this growing problem. Microsoft’s SharePoint document repository was designed to provide content collaboration and version control, but unfortunately, as the number of users increases, so does the amount of data that is stored in SharePoint.
So what is the solution to the SharePoint storage problem?
Network Computing brought this news to our attention in their article, “Is Storage A SharePoint Killer?” A different approach seems to be in order. Instead of viewing SharePoint as an intranet, it should be considered more as a database system and less of a file system.
Access Innovations’ Data Harmony suite of content enrichment and thesaurus management tools can be fully integrated with Microsoft SharePoint 2010. Data Harmony fills semantic gaps in SharePoint to help users take full advantage of their metadata through auto-classification, enterprise taxonomy management, entity extraction, and search enhancements. The end result is information assets that are more searchable and more accessible.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.
Looking to Indexing for Organization
In Australia, the Victorian Department of Human Services has been criticized for their recordkeeping practices by the state ombudsman. This came about from the frustration of former wards of state trying to access their historical records.
This interesting information was found on Image and Data Manager in their article, “Report blasts Victorian record-keeping quagmire.” The recommendation from the ombudsman was to digitize their current paper records. However, the state immediately claimed it a financial burden to digitize over 80 linear kilometers of paper-based records. In addition, many records contain handwritten registers that are unsuitable for digitization.
One wonders if, in addition to problems caused by the lack of indexing and organization, this massive collection of records is using valuable storage space that could be freed up with digitization.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.
Space is Money
A dynamic document management program can reduce costs, improve findability, and make work flow seamless. Document management systems continue to evolve, and what was once seen as a luxury is now considered a requirement.
A document management system is a network with many different components, and though it may seem complicated at first, navigating it is actually quite easy. Whether you are dealing with structured text (mostly database information) or unstructured text (paper documents), you can realize reduced costs associated with storing and retrieving paper documents and electronic content as well as reduced storage space, both physical and digital.
PC World brought this topic to our attention in their article, “Getting Started With Document Management.”
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.
Data, Data, Data
Conversations continue to revolve around the rapid growth of data creation and storage. Organizations are looking for ways to process and access data at a faster pace, all the while improving customer service. Part of the challenge includes maneuvering through unstructured data, massive amounts of unstructured data.
We found this interesting information on Business 2 Community in their article, “Discovery in the Age of Big Data.” The additional challenge of working with unstructured data in a big data environment is understanding exactly what type of data you have available.
It is so very important to choose a product that makes your content findable – easily and thoroughly. Access Innovations is one of a very small number of companies able to help its clients generate ANSI/ISO/W3C-compliant taxonomies and associated rule bases for machine-assisted indexing.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in taxonomies, metadata, and semantic enrichment to make your content findable.