This composite book on both the theory and practice of metadata provides a resource for the teaching and practice of cataloguers. The editor rightly says that cataloguing and metadata in the library environment are converging.
Divided into two parts, there are 11 chapters in all plus a comprehensive introduction which breaks the ground. Part 1, entitled Intellectual Foundations, has six chapters explaining the various aspects and concept of metadata and its creation in different systems such as in a health care agency, or museum of archeology. It defines and outlines the evolution of metadata and describes the basic metadata techniques based on original research. Part 2 (five chapters) is aptly entitled How to Create, Apply, and Use Metadata. The chapters dwell on metadata encoding and transmission standards, use of Dublin Core and other metadata standards, such as Text Encoding Initiative (TEI), EAD (Encoded Archival Description), and XML (Extensive Markup Language). The last chapter explains the use of metadata in a digital repository. In other words it explains how to plan and implement a metadata‐driven digital library. Since metadata and cataloguing are converging, the book explains metadata within the bibliographic context. It very adequately relates metadata to the theory behind cataloguing.
This is an introductory text on the theory and practice of metadata which ultimately is related to the technology of bibliographic control. Practical examples demonstrate the applications of metadata. It comes as a valuable instructional and learning resource on metadata from contributors who are experienced and known experts in this field. They provide ample practical examples in applications of metadata for resource description and development of institutional repositories.
One cannot agree more with Michael Gorman, who in his preview of this book calls it “a comprehensive overview of metadata written by experts in the field”.
