IFLA Section on IT - DELOS - NSF Tutorial on Metadata.

The storage and delivery of information in digital form introduces a number of new challenges. Users must be able to find appropriate information, they should be able to access the information in a usable form, creators of information should be assured that their intellectual property will be protected, and managers of information must be able to assume curatorial responsibilities such as long-term preservation. Metadata, or data about data, is increasingly recognised as a key component in overcoming these challenges. While metadata is sometimes seen as an extension of long-established library cataloguing practices, it differs due to its diverse areas of application and the radically different context of the Internet, where multiple communities of expertise and interest freely intermix and the boundaries among traditional roles (e.g., publisher, author, library) are blurred.

This tutorial and workshop will provide both a theoretical and practical overview of current metadata activities. Participants will come out of the day with background in the motivation and history of existing metadata initiatives and research, and with practical skills they can use in their roles as managers of digital collections. Some of the topics that will be explored are:

• The importance of metadata and the variety of its applications
• Metadata for resource discovery and the use of Dublin Core
• Data models and their relation to complex resource description
• Storing and transporting metadata on the Web, including the use of XML and RDF (Resource Description Framework)
• The use of metadata registries as a mechanism for managing different types of metadata
• Internationalisation of metadata
• Standards for harvesting metadata from repositories

Thomas Baker is Project Leader for Digital Libraries at the German National Research Centre for Information Technology (GMD) in Sankt-Augustin. Currently he is helping to build a multilingual registry for the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative and serves on the DCMI Executive Committee. He is a partner the EU-funded project SCHEMAS (a forum for metadata schema implementers) and leader of the Standardisation Forum of the DELOS Network of Excellence.

Carl Lagoze is Digital Library Scientist in the Computer Science Department of Cornell University. In this role he leads digital library research efforts that are funded by a mixture of National Science Foundation and industry grants. His research focuses on defining architecture for distributed digital libraries. He has played a leading role in international metadata initiatives including the Dublin Core and the NSF-JISC funding Harmony/ABC effort.