Metadata and Its Impact on Libraries

Three mavens of the cataloging world tackle the topic of metadata, explaining fundamental concepts and their accompanying rationales, as well as exploring current developments and future innovations in the library world. Part One examines the characteristics of multiple metadata schema, the creation of metadata for both monographic and continuous electronic resources, and its integration into local catalogs and databases. Part Two explores metadata's effect on current developments in online reference, choice of metadata schema, archiving, and digital preservation, and professional education, as well as future innovations yet unborn. A must-read for sophisticated information specialists, as well as for those who aspire to similar heights of intellectual worldliness. We believe that the community of information professionals who have organized and preserved the world's written treasures for thousands of years will not fail to continue to organize and preserve the world's digital treasures in the future, demonstrating their usual sensitivity and creativity, remembering the lessons history has taught them, and keeping in mind the interests of all their user communities, present and future, as they have always done. With these bold words, three mavens of the cataloging world tackle the topic of metadata. Undaunted by its dominance in the lexicon and collective consciousness of the library profession, they deftly anatomize the concept of data about data into discrete aspects (Metadata), then relate those aspects to a miscellany of circumstances in which librarians may increasingly find themselves (Its Impact on Libraries). Part One examines the characteristics of multiple metadata schema, the creation of metadata for both monographic and continuous electronic resources, and its integration into local catalogs and databases. Part Two explores metadata's effect on current developments in online reference, choice of metadata schema, archiving and digital preservation, and professional education, as well as future innovations yet unborn. A must-read for sophisticated information specialists, as well as those who aspire to similar heights of intellectual worldliness.

Sheila S. Intner is professor and director, Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Mount Holyoke College. She has received several awards, including ALA's Margaret Mann Citation Award for outstanding contributions to education for cataloging and classification. Susan S. Lazinger is senior lecturer, School of Library Science, Archive & Information Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. Jean Weihs has worked in university, public, school, and special libraries as a reference librarian, a bibliographer, and a school librarian. Most of her career has involved teaching cataloguing to librarians, library technicians, and school librarians in Canada and the United States. She represented the Canadian Committee on Cataloguing for nine years on the Joint Steering Committee for Revision of AACR, five of these as JSC Chair. She has held 45 positions on national and international committees. Jean Weihs has written 17 books, six separately published pamphlets/documents, ten chapters in books edited by others, and over 125 articles and book reviews in professional journals. She is the recipient of 13 national and international awards.