Meta meta everywhere and not a mind to think. In the past decade, metadata standards have proliferated at a pace never before seen, and not only because of shifts in the underlying technology. As professionals, you will need to become fluent in perhaps half a dozens standards and familiar with perhaps twice that number. Pretty clearly, the situation will only get worse.
This week, we will begin to learn the alphabet anew by dipping into some of the more common standards, and in the process, I hope we will become thoroughly confused as to why any self-respecting archivist would do such a thing.
It may be worth keeping an eye out for the bigger picture: why are there so many standards and what does it say about the profession? Are these standards all necessary? What impact does the explosion of metadata have on our ability to manage archival collection?
