Guest editorial

Citation

Sicilia, M.-A. (2007), "Guest editorial", The Electronic Library, Vol. 25 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/el.2007.26325baa.001

Guest editorial

Metadata has been defined by Greenberg (2003) as “structured data about an object that supports functions associated with the designated object. […] structured data, implies a systematic ordering of data according to a metadata schema specification […], the object, is any entity, form of mode for which contextual data can be recorded […].”. As such, it is clear that in some sense metadata has existed at least from the moment in which any kind of “secondary document” was created, i.e. documents describing other documents. Thus, metadata as a practical discipline or as a field of study has a professional tradition and an obvious central role in Information Science and Librarianship. Librarians creating descriptions and classifications for physical books were clearly producing structured descriptions – usually for the function of facilitating search or organizing the physical arrangement of the volumes. Consequently, metadata is not a phenomenon of the last years, but an essential aspect of the human endeavour oriented to organize and provide better access to information resources, which is deeply rooted in cataloguing practices (El-Sherbini and Klim, 2004).

However, research and innovation relating to metadata has evolved and become more complex in the last years due to a number of factors. First, the explosive growth of the Internet as a communication medium has fostered the use of metadata for very different purposes, and in addition to manual creation of records, there are automated tools available for (at least partially) automating the task (Greenberg et al., 2006). Second, the concept of “Semantic Web” and its supporting technologies – including XML, RDF and Web Services – provide now a much richer and powerful technological framework for developing advanced metadata-intensive applications. And last but not least, there is an emerging awareness of the importance of metadata and its applications as a specific discipline, covering aspects that cross-cut many disciplines and that are useful for a wide array of applications. The consequence is that metadata can be expressed in more complex languages, even including the description of the context in which the metadata statements have sense (Khriyenko and Terziyan, 2006). These languages are part of the concept of a Semantic Web, which aims at providing advanced applications by exploiting metadata expressed in terms of ontologies. Ontologies provide the formal and human semantics that enrich and make more precise the meaning of metadata statements. Metadata is thus considered a key asset, so quality really matters (Robertson, 2005) and specific methods and techniques need to be carefully assessed.

In 2005, a group of scholars decided to start a conference series related to metadata as a concrete research and inquiry discipline, called MTSR (Metadata and Semantics Research conference) (www.metadata-semantics.org). The first conference took place completely online in 2005, and the second is being organized as a hybrid (part physical, part on-line) event by the Ionian Academy of Corfu (Ionian University) that will take place in 2007. The conference aims at bringing together researchers and practitioners that share a common interest in metadata, its representation, its semantics and its diverse applications. The contents of this special refereed issue of The Electronic Library gather together papers selected for further expansion from the conference and others coming from both an open call and regular submission to the journal, all of them sharing its relation with metadata as an object or technology of interest and their applications to digital libraries and information centres.

The paper by Riley and Dalmau describes the results of the IN Harmony project, targeting the creation of a standards-based, shared cataloguing tool for describing sheet music and to provide online access. Their report illustrates the methodical development of metadata schemas for specific collections and functions, using different user-oriented techniques as part of the definition process. Such schemas greatly increase the opportunities for information sharing with common structures.

The paper by Ferrán, Casadesús, Krakowska and Minguillón turns attention to the educational context of an Open University. Concretely, they provide insights coming from the empirical evaluation of the usage of digital resources in the context of learning processes. The aim of the study is informing the adoption of richer metadata schemas that could better help in locating resources and identifying the key ones.

The article by Korfiatis, Poulos and Bokos examines the structure required to support indicators for scientific literature, focusing on typical bibliometric indicators. The specific requirements for the modelling and visualization of social networks are examined, which could eventually be adopted for a standard and interoperable access to the structure of scientific communication.

Tambouris, Manouselis and Costopolou address the structure of metadata element sets to describe e-government resources in digital collections, providing a general-purpose framework together with the description of a concrete case study.

A different kind of issue is addressed in the contribution of Ding and Sølvberg. The availability of a wide range of metadata schemas entails a problem of differences in the schema used for queries. The authors provide a solution for the problem that enables the interrelation of different schemas expressed as ontologies that can be used for complex queries.

Park addresses an analytical and statistical inquiry of current metadata sets in the domain of architecture, pointing out to several critical issues for metadata design and normalization, specific to the complicated nature of architectural works.

Uddin and Janecek introduce the integration of faceted classification systems within content systems to enhance the access and navigation of Web contents. Faceted classification enables different navigation strategies beyond hierarchy traversal based on different metadata paths.

Finally, Yang and colleagues describe a technique that uses metadata in the form of ontologies to aid in the process of answering queries, including the tracking of past queries as a useful information source for new ones.

The papers in this special issue provide a relevant look at the increasing activity of the field of metadata studies in the area related to digital resource collections. Together they illustrate the way metadata design and assessment is currently being conducted, and the different problems that require specific techniques for the use and full exploitation of metadata infrastructures.

AcknowledgementsThe author acknowledges the support of the MTSR scientific committee and the Editor, David Raitt during the process, and his commitment to producing a high quality journal issue.