metadata records types & functions current standards record creation & tools metadata value space references

1. Metadata development overview

1.1 What is metadata?

The term metadata is used differently in different communities.

NISO's Understanding Metadata" (2004) defines metadata as:

The American Library Association (ALA) Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access (CC:DA) presented the formal working definitions for the three terms, after a study of 46 potential definitions:

Source: CC:DA Task Force on Metadata:
Final Report (CC:DA/TF/Metadata/5), June 16, 2000
http://www.libraries.psu.edu/tas/jca/ccda/tf-meta6.html
(last accessed 2015-08-01)

 

Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI)'s Glossary

Source: DCMI Glossary,
http://dublincore.org/documents/2005/05/26/usageguide/glossary.shtml
2005.

(last accessed 2015-08-01)

1.2 The development of metadata

In her introduction to a Special Topic Issue: Integrating Multiple Overlapping Metadata Standards of the Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Zorana Ercegovac (1999) provided an overview of the metadata development, in which she led readers through the pre-Internet era and the Internet era:

Pre-Internet Era of Metadata

MAchine Readable Cataloging (MARC). http://www.loc.gov/marc/

The Internet Arena and Evolving Metadata Traditions

Since the early 1990s,

Priscilla Caplan described the metadata movement as "a blooming garden, traversed by crosswalks, atop a steep and rocky road" (Caplan, 2000).

(2) There is no limit for the number of overlapping metadata standards for any type of resources or any subject domain.

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