This song sort of covers the history of library metadata from the 1970s to the present. It's partly inspired by Fred Gwynne's children's books, particularly "A Chocolate Moose for Dinner." It covers everything from metadata harvesting, to the world of library acronyms, to the wonders and criticisms of linked data, with some allusions to artificial intelligence, Sam Crawford, and Chief Wilson.
lyrics
a. a chocolate moose for dinner
i sat on computer tape
waiting for distribution
pieced together by professionals
coded into fields and subfields
the machines know me as 76-4811
the humans see me as a play on homonyms
herman munster and his tree of shoes
where we live in pens and tortoises have hair
i exist to help you find what i represent
you can find the arms race at PZ7.G99 Ch3
i've been around since 1976
duplicated and stored in thousands of databases
as the years have gone by
i've been expanded with more fields
i've got subjects from every language on the planet
and summaries that go on and on and on and on
i've become so fat that i break z39.50
b. harvesting the universe
free stuff everywhere, there's free stuff everywhere
point your harvester at me, and download everything we have
free stuff everywhere, there's free stuff everywhere
we've got crap in dublin core, and the latest flavor of the day
we've jammed 150 authors into one field
and every word of our ebook has been put into one subject field
our specialities are crashing your ILS
and cracking your crosswalk with Unicode 61521
free stuff everywhere, there's free stuff everywhere
we don't know when we made it, so it was all published in 2017
free stuff everywhere, there's free stuff everywhere
random punctuation is our way of honoring e.e. cummings
our schemas are made up out of thin air
go ahead and send us an e-mail, we'll never read it
our control numbers and URLs are in a state of flux
you get these neat free records, but you'll never find the resource
and we don't even know where it is either
stuff for free, stuff for free
get your free stuff here
we have it everywhere
free stuff here, free stuff, free stuff
free stuff for you
free stuff everywhere
come and get your free stuff
come and get your free stuff
come and get your free stuff
put on your metadata socks and hop on board the linked data bus
oh, let's get semantic and turn ourselves into ontologies
i'm a hierarchy of taxonomies sliding down a serialization
turn me into a billion billion billion billion triples
that's more than sam crawford ever had
load me up with uris and dump me in the web
turn me into subjects and predicates and objects
i'm a metadata sock hanging on the clothesline of knowledge
it's a triplestore filled to the brim with triples
even chief wilson has to admire that
and we're linking, and we're linking, linking all over the place
i know you're out of orange juice
and your milk's two weeks past expiration
i still can't do anything with 150 authors jammed in my creator field
but we're all happy campers anyway
and we're linking, and we're linking, linking all over the place
i'm receiving triples from your toilet and your car
your air's low in the right front tire
and you only have three days of toilet paper left
should i order you some more?
and we're linking, and we're linking, linking all over the place
and now i know what homonyms are
i can tell what he meant by arms races and trees of shoes
now you can wear my metadata socks and be my favorite machine
hey sam crawford, let me introduce you to herman munster
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