ABSTRACT
Digital repositories have grown at an explosive rate over the last de cade due to new information technologies, particularly those supporting World Wide Web (Web) applications. This growth has led to a tremen dous increase in the need for data management, an intense interest in metadata in a wide range of communities (e.g., education, government, scientific, business, etc.), and extensive development of metadata schemes. There are hundreds of metadata schemes being used, many of which are in their second, third, or nth iteration. Many specifica tions developed for information resources have been endorsed by standards bodies. For example, the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set, Version 1.1 (2003) (hereafter referred to as the Dublin Core) has been formally endorsed as a standard by Comite Europeen de Nor malisation (CEN) as CEN Workshop Agreement (CWA) 13874 (https://www.cenorm.be/cenorm/businessdomains/businessdomains/ informationsocietystandardizationsystem/published+cwas/13874.pdf), the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) as NISO Z39.85-2001 (https://www.niso.org/standards/resources/Z39-85.pdf), and most recently the International Standards Organization (ISO) as ISO 15836-2003 (https://www.niso.org/international/SC4/n515.pdf).
