Metadata and Its Impact on Libraries

Sheila S. Intner is professor and director, Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Mount Holyoke College. She has received several awards, including ALA's Margaret Mann Citation Award for outstanding contributions to education for cataloging and classification.Susan S. Lazinger is senior lecturer, School of Library Science, Archive & Information Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.Jean Weihs has worked in university, public, school, and special libraries as a reference librarian, a bibliographer, and a school librarian. Most of her career has involved teaching cataloguing to librarians, library technicians, and school librarians in Canada and the United States. She represented the Canadian Committee on Cataloguing for nine years on the Joint Steering Committee for Revision of AACR, five of these as JSC Chair. She has held 45 positions on national and international committees. Jean Weihs has written 17 books, six separately published pamphlets/documents, ten chapters in books edited by others, and over 125 articles and book reviews in professional journals. She is the recipient of 13 national and international awards.

• Metadata Concepts & DefinitionsWhat is Metadata?Metadata Schemas & Their Relationships to Particular CommunitiesLibrary and Information-related Metadata SchemasCreating Library Metadata for Monographic MaterialsCreating Library Metadata for Continuing MaterialsIntegrating Library Metadata Into Local Cataloging and Bibliographic DatabasesImpact on Current & Future Collections & ServicesDigital Collections/Digital LibrariesArchiving & Preserving Digital MaterialsImpact of Digital Resources on Library ServicesFuture PossibilitiesAppendix A: Glossary of AcronymsAppendix B: Answers to ExercisesIndex

Noted catalogers Intner, Susan S. Lazinger, and Jean Weihs have written an excellent text suitable for either students or librarians on the job who need guidance in preparing metadata. The book begins with an introductory description of metadata and an overview of some schemas, but the meat is in the two chapters devoted to creating bibliographic records as metadata for electronic monographic materials and continuing resources. Some familiarity with MARC and AACR2 is imperative, but anyone with even a modicum of cataloging experience will find the explanations and examples informative….Highly recommended for catalogers and other information professionals who need to understand the relationship between metadata and traditional bibliographic control.