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intended to promote author-generated description of
Metadata vs. Catalogue
In this era, information sources not only come in the printed or internet resources. The elements fall into three groups:
physical form. It also comes in a digital collection such as content, intellectual property and instantiation. Dublin
online databases, electronic journals and internet resources. Core Standards has characteristics as follows:
These resources are selected and cataloged manually and
centralized it into a large catalogue database for digital or The core set can be extended with further
hybrid library. elements.
All elements are optional.
It was quite troublesome to catalogue the electronic resources
and there are many problems in cataloguing digital All elements are repeatable.
information sources. First and foremost, digital resources are Any elements may be modified by a qualifier.
huge in number and rapidly grow so it is impossible for
human cataloguers to cope each and every item. Secondly, the
characteristics of digital information resources required
different standard to be followed for each type of document.
Bibliographic formats such as MARC and catalogue codes for
example, AACR2 not suitable for representing all the
characters of digital resources. To cope with this, various
metadata standards have been developed, for example, Dublin
Core Standards for representing different types of digital
information resources.

The term metadata had appeared in library and information
science literature in mid -1990s. Simple definition of metadata
is „data about data‟. Dempsey and Heery (1998) have come up
with better definition which is:

“Data which describe attributes of resource.”
“Data associated with object which relieves their
potential users of having to have full advance Conclusion
knowledge of their existence or characteristics.” Metadata has become important issues for information
organization since the birth of knowledge management and
Metadata supports a variety of operations and perhaps to users digital information resources. Still, cataloguing remains highly
of metadata is not only human but also computer programs. relevant in the modern information retrieval environment even
Library has been used to create catalogue records as metadata though AACR2 was not specifically designed to cater internet
for searching and retrieval of records. Metadata produced in resources.
the library consist of some item-specific information such as
author, title, data of publication and unique identifier (such as
ISBN). Resources
Chowdury, G. (2004). Introduction to modern information
Gilliland-Swetland (1998) classifies metadata into five retrieval. London: Facet Publishing.
categories on basis of their use, (1) administrative metadata
Dempsey, L. A. (1998). Metadata: a current view of practice
use in managing and administering information, (2)
descriptive metadata used to describe or identify information and issues. Journal of Documentation , 54 (2), 145-72.

resources, (3) preservation metadata related to the
Dublin core metadata element set, version 1.1. (n.d.). Re-
preservation management of information resources, (4) trieved June 25, 2009, from Dublin Core Standard: http://
technical metadata related to how a system functions or dublincore.org/documents/dces
metadata behaves, and (5) use metadata related to the level
and types of use of information sources. Gilliland-Swetland, A. (1998). Defining Metadata. In M. Baca,
Introduction to metadata: pathways to digital information
The Dublin Core (pp. 1-8). Los Angeles, California: Getty Information Insti-
Some of the metadata standards which have been built by tute.
experts in their respective subject areas, such as MARC and
the Dublin Core are general in nature and can accommodate Rowley, J. A. (2000). Organizing knowledge: an introduction
to managing access to information. Aldershot: Gower.
descriptive information about digital information resources.
Dublin Core Standard consists of 15-element set of descriptors Svenonius, E. (2000). The intellectual foundation of
information organization. Cambridge, MA: MIT.
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