METS: A Survey of Recent Literature and Applications, Lindsey Wagner

METS is a less than ten-year-old metadata standard which can be used for both preservation and transmission of digital objects and their metadata. It uses XML to describe descriptive, administrative and structural information about the object. It is well known for its flexibility which can be both a positive and a negative. It allows institutions using METS to insert the metadata they want and may already be using into the METS document, but it also is a detriment to interoperability since institutions are implementing METS in very different ways. This makes METS documents created by one institution unusable for another institution that implements METS in a different way. While METS is a tool which can be used for transmission of metadata, the fact that there is no standard implementation actually impedes the transmission of metadata. This paper will include a discussion of METS as well as a summary of the research that has been done.