A head start

Australian Library Journal, The, May, 2004 by Helen Dunford

Caplan, Priscilla Metadata fundamentals for all librarians. Chicago: American Library Association, 2003. 192p US$59.00 soft ISBN 0838908470

LIBRARIANS WILL IMMEDIATELY REALISE THAT THEY HAVE BEEN CREATING 'METADATA', or data bout data, in the form of catalogue records for many years. However, with e advent of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Dublin Core initiative in the mid-1990s, the term began to be used exclusively to describe the information necessary to make computer files useful to humans. However, in Metadata fundamentals for all librarians, Priscilla Caplan uses the term to include all structured information, whether electronic or not, about information resources of any media type or format. It is 'information that describes content' and may differ...