Metadata and Its Impact on Libraries

Citation

Robertson, R.J. (2007), "Metadata and Its Impact on Libraries", Library Review, Vol. 56 No. 3, pp. 255-256. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530710736091

Sheila Intner, Susan Lazinger, and Jean Weihs need to be commended for their efforts in taking on the task of writing a textbook on metadata – the rapid pace of change in metadata schemas and the unending development of new schemas, application profiles, and usage guidelines make any attempt to pin down what students most need to know a tricky endeavour. When the enormous variety of uses of metadata and the conflicting demands of metadata users are taken into consideration – even just within the library setting – the expectations of such a book are high. Metadata and Its Impact on Libraries succeeds in delivering a fairly comprehensive review of the topic of metadata and manages to shine in some areas.

Metadata and Its Impact on Libraries is comprised of two parts; the first six chapters (around 73 per cent of the book) make up the section titled “Metadata concepts and definitions” and the remaining four chapters make up the section titled “Impact on current and future collections and services”. Each chapter has an extensive bibliography which provides further reading for the topics covered. Two of the chapters in the first part include exercises. There are answers at the back of the book as well as a list of acronyms and a glossary.

The book provides a very thorough overview of metadata creation in library services, discussing the issues involved in cataloguing and classifying digital resources (including websites) within a variety of metadata schemas (including MARC). Although they accommodate other views, the authors’ suggested approach to the description and management of electronic resources is that they should be incorporated into normal cataloguing workflows where possible. The authors take the opinion that although metadata may support types of description, the processes of metadata creation are merely a new set of labels for established and understood library workflows.

Two excellent chapters are “Digital collections and digital libraries” and “Archiving and preserving digital materials: why? what? who? how? how much?”. These chapters provide a thorough overview of some of the most significant projects and initiatives in these areas in recent years. The chapter “Digital collections and digital libraries” also provides a useful analysis of some of the common features of successful digital library projects. In the brief concluding chapter the authors summarize their thoughts on the “Impact of metadata on current and future collections and services” and express their hope that the use of metadata will continue to spread in libraries as libraries continue to engage with providing internet‐based resources.

I have to admit that I find this a very strange book: it is comprehensive and provides a very thorough review in some areas, but is missing critical depth in others. For example, it covers the developmental progress of AACR2/RDA for electronic resources in detail but says nothing about folksonomies. The book largely omits the paradigmatic questions web‐based resources have raised and engages with metadata and electronic resources as it relates to cataloguing. It does not discuss the growing need for libraries to provide increased information literacy training to use an ever expanding range of search engines and databases. Despite having a chapter reviewing the development of some successful digital libraries, the book omits the implications of the library as “publisher”. In particular, identifiers – possibly the key issue in digital asset description and interoperability – only occur briefly in the digital rights management section (a section which in itself is quite thin). The book does not engage with the possible impact of involving resource authors in metadata creation, with the possibilities of tagging or other forms of user‐driven annotation. It also largely ignores both eprints and learning objects.

I assume that this work is intended as a textbook from the series title and the writing style, but the book lacks an introduction or purpose statement to confirm this. The lack of an introduction – the book plunges straight into defining metadata – is an unfortunate choice as, even if they should already know the answer, the first thing a student needs to be reminded of is why the following pages of acronyms and minutiae matter. The book lacks adequate detail in its table of contents – making it hard to use as a ready reference tool. There also seems to be a degree of editorial inconsistency making the book less accessible. For example, some chapters finish with a conclusions section, some with a summary section, and some with an unlabelled concluding paragraph. These inconsistencies are understandable in a multi‐author work, but they are problematic and unnecessary in a textbook.

I commend this book for all that it has done, but I suspect students will be left unsatisfied by it. Given the authors attention to detail, a revised edition of this book could be great, but this version feels either inadequately edited or rushed into production, as there are glaring style and content issues unaddressed.