[cc-education] Can we tag open content?
Steve Foerster
steve at chrysology.com
Thu Dec 4 21:57:12 EST 2003
Stephen wrote:
<< [Locating open content materials] is key, since you can't simply
browse hundreds of thousands of resources the way you can browse your
hard drive (you can't even browse some hard drives any more, including
mine). Thus, an effective search mechanism would be required. >>
One can browse the entire Internet as one would a hard drive using
services like DMOZ and Yahoo! If open content is categorized
intelligently, I'd think it would be possible to make it all reasonably
accessible by drill down.
Perhaps a useful approach would be to designate a set of meta tags that
tag its document as open content and specifies which license applies to
it? If there also were a recognized categorization scheme that had its
own meta tag, then robots could add open content to a directory.
Of course, this approach is HTML centric, but there could be allowances
for PDFs, RTFs, Word documents, and other file formats that were
available from a page with such tags.
<< The second part is a mechanism to preview items before inserting them
into your document. I don't know what to say about this, really. >>
Since I'm going meta tag crazy, I'll ask whether the description meta
tag is useful here as a sort of thumbnail for text? I guess it depends
whether you're looking for a specific paragraph or a whole document.
<< The third part is the payoff. Once the user has reviewed the
resource, she selects either all or part of it. The resource is then
copied directly into the docuemnt in the appropriate format. For
example, suppose the user found a text on owls, and located a paragraph
worth quoting. She highlights the paragraph and then double-clicks
(say). The paragraph is then copied into the document, and a tag or
caption is placed into the document identifying the bibliographical
information and the creative commons (or equivalent) license information
(this latter is key for commercial users, who will not reuse content
unless they are certain, and can prove, that they have permission to use
the content). >>
I suppose the open content directory that uses a meta tag system could
also generate code for use by those publishing modified documents.
"If you use this content in your document, you must add the following
HTML code to your document's header:
<meta etc />
<meta blah />"
This is an off the cuff suggestion, so shoot it down, people. :)
-=Steve=-
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