A Metadata Infrastructure for the 21st Century

Roy Tennant
California Digital Library

Abstract
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MARC and AACR (1 and 2) have sustained us for longer than anyone could have hoped. Although we have tinkered with them for decades, they are now showing their age more than ever. Now with multiple metadata standards that we should be conversant with (e.g., ONIX, DC), and with an encoding (i.e., XML) and manipulation (i.e., XSLT) infrastructure widely available, it seems like an opportune time to revisit our foundational standards. What are the challenges that a 21st Century metadata infrastructure should be able to meet? What are the opportunities before us? What foundation do we need to build to support the collections and services of the 21st century library? These and related issues will be explored in a session that will hopefully leave no sacred cow ungored, and no assumption unchallenged.

Biography
Roy Tennant is eScholarship Web & Services Design Manager for the California Digital Library. Prior to this, he created and managed the Berkeley Digital Library SunSITE, which is both a digital library and a support service for other digital library developers (http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/). He is the author of "Practical HTML: A Self-Paced Tutorial" and co-author of "Crossing the Internet Threshold: An IInstructional Handbook". His articles have appeared in numerous library and information technology magazines and journals, and he writes the monthly column "Digital Libraries" for Library Journal. He is the founder and manager of the Web4Lib and XML4Lib electronic discussions. He created, and edits, the current awareness publication Current Cites, which has been published every month for over a decade. He holds a Masters degree from UC Berkeley in Library & Information Studies, and a B.A. from Humboldt State in Geography.