This book assists information professionals in improving the usability of digital objects by adequately documenting them and using tools for metadata management. It provides practical advice for libraries, archives, and museums dealing with digital collections in a wide variety of formats and from a wider variety of sources. This book is forward-thinking in its approach to using metadata to drive digital library systems, and will be a valuable resource for those creating and managing digital resources as technologies for using those resources grow and change. Provides practical guidance on the key choices that information professionals in libraries, archives, and museums must make when defining and implementing a metadata strategy Provides insight on the new area of metadata librarianship while positions are opening in many organizations and many professionals worldwide are charged with managing and sharing metadata Focuses on metadata usability and the careful definition of what a digital library system must do in order to define a metadata strategy

An Emergent Theory of Digital Library Metadata is a reaction to the current digital library landscape that is being challenged with growing online collections and changing user expectations. The theory provides the conceptual underpinnings for a new approach which moves away from expert defined standardised metadata to a user driven approach with users as metadata co-creators. Moving away from definitive, authoritative, metadata to a system that reflects the diversity of users’ terminologies, it changes the current focus on metadata simplicity and efficiency to one of metadata enriching, which is a continuous and evolving process of data linking. From predefined description to information conceptualised, contextualised and filtered at the point of delivery. By presenting this shift, this book provides a coherent structure in which future technological developments can be considered. Metadata is valuable when continuously enriched by experts and users Metadata enriching results from ubiquitous linkin Metadata is a resource that should be linked openly The power of metadata is unlocked when enriched metadata is filtered for users individually

This book provides a practical introduction to metadata for the digital library, describing in detail how to implement a strategic approach which will enable complex digital objects to be discovered, delivered and preserved in the short- and long-term.

Metadata is used to organize and access information in an effective way. This is a comprehensive description of the various forms of metadata, its applications, and how librarians can use it. Both descriptive and nondescriptive forms of metadata are defined and applied to library functions.