Much ado about metadata Available to Purchase

The traditional archival accessioning of records when they are no longer required by their originators has led to problems, especially in the case of electronic records. This has created not only huge backlogs but also either the non‐receipt of electronic records or their receipt with vital contextual or structural metadata missing. The solution put forward by Bearman, Hedstrom, Dollar and Kandur is the metadata systems approach. This approach involves archivists in managing the context and structure of electronic records rather than their content. This is achieved not only through using electronic records’ existing metadata, but also through archivists influencing the design of electronic records systems to provide them with the metadata they need. MacNeil, however, has reservations about the metadata systems approach, and feels that archivists’ influence on metadata for potential secondary use contravenes the archivist’s primary duty to protect and preserve. This article posits that the positive effects of archivists’ influence on metadata far outweigh the negative.