All this is perfectly true, but Steve's point is still well taken that a
pitch for something is best written in ways the audience understands. An
indecipherable message certainly won't get results and you might as well
save your key tap time.  I, personally, was even more turned off by the
flood of acronyms, of which I was familiar with only a few. I think I
gave up on that message after about the second paragraph.

Lucy Sperlin


Cate Cooney wrote:
>
> Stephen, Jay et al.,
>
> Ah the joys of language!
>
> Jay Heuman wrote:
> >         You should not apologize for anything . . . people in different fields
> > and subfields have different knowledge.
>
> Absolutely!  And asking is the only way to educate yourself.
> >
> > > what the heck does interoperability mean and what on
> > > earth is a metadata vocabulary?
> >
> >         "Interoperability" is just another way to say "compatibility."
> >         Metadata vocabulary is just another way to say data sets (spreadsheets,
> > databases, etc.).
>
> Not exactly.  Metadata vocabulary is a standard, agreed upon set of
> terms to describe data.  Huh?  For instance, your database of slides has
> fields like "artist" and "title" while my database of slides has fields
> which describe the same concepts, but I call them "maker" and "what they
> done called it."  If we are using the same metadata vocabulary, we will
> call the fields the same thing, and gosh, if our systems are
> interoperable, maybe we could share the information easily.
> >
> > > If you are trying to create interest in the community
> > > may I suggest you start first by using terms with
> > > accepted/standard/(any) meaning?
>
> That's funny, because that's the goal.  It is good to be reminded that
> what have become accepted, standard terms to one person, may be jargon
> to others.  And as Jay said, there are a whole bunch of people with
> different areas of expertise who make up an institution, so educating
> yourself about what they do, rather than brushing off their terminology
> as made-up terms with no meaning, will probably make the entire
> institution function more smoothly.
>
> > > Recently I've also encountered such gems as post-genome
> > > and post-global.Why must we learned folk try so hard to
> > > verbalize ourselves into oblivion?
> >
> >         There is an oft-asked question.  The answer, quite simply, is
> > self-preservation.  If everyone can understand everything, what good is
> > an MA or PhD?
>
> As one of my former professors said "any turkey can get a PhD." and if
> you make up some really nifty terms with hyphens, parentheses, or
> nonStandard capitalization, you just might impress someone.  However,
> "interoperability" isn't quite the same as "post-genome" in terms of
> elitism!
>
> Oh, and as Jay pointed out, language changes.  English changes a lot:
> think of all our new verbs, which were once perfectly nice nouns:
> "office," "flipchart" (oh, wait, I hated that noun too...)
>
> I suppose my point is this: sometimes words you don't understand are
> jargon, and sometimes they are terms for something you know nothing
> about.  I am a little alarmed by the way the business world and yes,
> computers, have changed our amazing language, but change it will (unless
> you want to be like the French and have an academy to establish a
> standard vocabulary, metadata or no).
>
> -Cate Cooney
> Digital Projects Librarian
>
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