Metadata and the World Wide Web

Metadata is of paramount importance for persons, organizations, and endeavors of every dimension that are increasingly turning to the World Wide Web (hereafter referred to as the Web) as a chief conduit for accessing and disseminating information. This is evidenced by the development and implementation of metadata schemas supporting projects ranging from restricted corporate Intranets, data warehouses, and consumer-oriented electronic commerce enterprises—to freely accessible digital libraries, educational initiatives, virtual museums, and other public websites. Today’s metadata activities are unprecedented because they extend beyond the traditional library environment in an effort to deal with the Web’s exponential growth. This article considers metadata in today’s Web environment. The article defines metadata, examines the relationship between metadata and cataloging, provides definitions for key metadata vocabulary terms, and explores the topic of metadata generation. Metadata is an extensive and expanding subject that is prevalent in many environments. For practical reasons, this article has elected to concentrate on the information resource domain, which is defined by electronic textual documents, graphical images, archival materials, museum artifacts, and other objects found in both digital and physical information centers (e.g., libraries, museums, record centers, archives, etc.). To show the extent and larger application of metadata, examples are also drawn from the news channel, data warehouse, electronic commerce, open source, and medical communities.