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Familiarity with and use of metadata formats
and metadata registries amongst those
working in diverse professional communities
within the information sector
Panayiota Polydoratou and David Nicholas
The Internet Studies Research Group, Department of Information Science, Northampton Square,
City University, London EC1V 0HB
P.Polydoratou@soi.city.ac.uk
Metadata registries are considered to be a solution to the problem of data sharing and
standardising of information on the Internet.The International Organization for Informa-
tion recognised the need for a standardised approach to this problem and produced ISO/
IEC 11179 InformationTechnology - - Speci¢cation and standardisation of data elements.
As part of an ongoing research project on the ISO/IEC 11179 metadata registries imple-
mentation a questionnaire survey was carried out on four discussion lists and the EU
funded SCHEMAS 2nd workshop (23-24th November 2000). Results from this sur vey,
which was essentially aiming to identify how familiar people were with metadata and
metadata registries, are presented along with a brief introduction to the ISO/IEC 11179
InformationTechnology ^ Speci¢cation and standardisation of data elements standard.
Introduction
A fundamental characteristic of the ‘informa-
tion revolution’ is the availability of lots of free
information to anyone with a computer, a net-
work connection and some basic computer lit-
eracy skills. The downside of all this is
information overload, extraneous information,
etc.These matters have been widely discussed.
(Wilson, 1996; Reuters Studies, 1996, 1997). It
was soon recognised that in order to be able to
locate, access and retrieve information of inter-
est from the exponentially growing informa-
tion pile that is the Web it would have to be
organised and managed.
Libraries are the institutions that are tradi-
tionally associated with the organisation of
information. Library practices such as catalo-
guing, indexing, abstracting, and classifying
have been applied to large data sets for years.
Thesepracticesarebaseduponagreedrules
and codes that refer to the syntax, semantics
and the structural form of the resource
described. In time they have grown to sophisti-
cated standards and the librar y community
has succeeded in dealing with the problems
associated with preservation, maintenance,
and exchange of information. Libraries have a
longer tradition in the production and
exchange of information in electronic form
than any other organisation in the biblio-
graphic information chain (Dempsey, 1989).
But of course nothing has been tackled on the
scale of the Web and they have played only a
minor role in the Web’s actual development.
Nevertheless, Baker (1996) acknowledges that
‘the Web must become more like a well-orga-
nised librar y’. And Lynch (1997) also quotes
that:
In short, the Net is not a digital librar y. But if
it is to continue to grow and thrive as a new
means of communication, something ver y
much like traditional library services will
be needed to organise, access and preserve
networked information.
The development of metadata formats has
been raised as a method to provide for the
description and e⁄cient retrieval of informa-
tion.
The e¡ective management of networked
digital information . . . will increasingly rely
Aslib Proceedings Vol 53, No. 8, September 2001 ^ 309