Many books have been written about metadata, which is not surprising: “data about data” is at the centre of most library and information science applications and research.
This book is, according to authors, both a textbook and an instructional guide for practitioners. It covers all aspects of metadata, starting from concepts, principles and current applications in different domains to trends, innovative research and advanced technologies. The topics are organised on an outcome‐oriented learning approach, following the typical tasks in implementation of metadata application projects.
The first part, “Fundamentals of metadata”, covers definitions, principles and the basic structure of metadata. This is followed by metadata standards in major applications domains: general purpose, cultural objects, visual resources, learning objects, archives, scientific data, and media. Preservation, rights management and agent metadata are covered, too.
The second part has the title “Metadata building blocks” and covers techniques for assessing needs in different project environments from defining the element set, controlling the values and creating application profiles, followed by different ways of encoding the schemas. The major component of the book is the chapter on creating metadata records. It starts from conceptual models, discusses metadata resources and tools and examples of expressing metadata records in HTML, XML and RDF.
The third part, “Metadata services”, introduces metadata registries, repositories, and metadata harvesting. It concludes with issues of measuring metadata quality and interoperability. The final section: “Metadata outlook and research”, reviews major research areas in metadata architecture, modelling and semantics. Finally, the book ends with a very useful glossary and an extensive up‐to‐date bibliography.
Each chapter provides a recommended reading list and a series of exercises. In addition, a companion web site (www.metadataetc.org/book‐website/) offers a list of additional sources, quizzes and exercises, and a CD‐ROM with answers and more exercises is available to instructors who adopt the book as a required textbook for their courses.
This is a comprehensive work, covering aspects of metadata beyond the narrow library environment. It is not intended for beginners, but will certainly prove to be a valuable resource for those who wish to explore the topics in more detail. Educators will appreciate the broad coverage of topics and a wealth of examples, which are, admittedly, predominantly North American. On the other hand the students (with the exception of the more advanced ones) may find the text relatively condensed.
It is difficult to think of any important topic not covered. Because it is aimed at a general overview, no topic is given particular preference, which will assure a broad audience. I can only think of one topic deserving more than just a mention: collection‐level metadata. With an increasing number of portals and other distributed searching services collection‐level metadata is becoming increasingly important for users when trying to perform targeted searching. Still, the omission of this topic does not diminish my admiration for the authors: they managed to cover this vast and complex area from all aspects and collected an impressive array of illustrative examples.
