Why do we need metadata?
Digital identification
- Used to differentiate one object from another
- Used to identify sets of data
- Improves scholarly rigour of digital content
Organizing e-resources
- Organizing links to resources based on audience or topic
- Building these pages dynamically from metadata stored in database
Resource discovery
- Allowing resources to be found by relevant criteria
- Identifying resources
- Bringing similar resources together
- Distinguishing dissimilar resources
- Facilitates citation
Facilitating interoperability
- Federated searching across collections
- Allows for sharing and transfer of data by:
- using defined metadata schemas
- sharing transfer protocols and crosswalks
Archival preservation and persistence
- Digital information is fragile and can be corrupted or altered
- It may become unusable as storage technologies change
- Metadata is key to ensuring that resources will survive and continue to be accessible into the future:
- track lineage/provenance
- detail its physical characteristics and behaviour in order to emulate it in future technologies
