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This book serves as a primer on information and knowledge organization, with particular reference to metadata practices in the digital environment. It introduces the conventions and standards of contemporary document description, and the principles and trends of professional practice.

This timely book employs the unifying mechanism of the semantic web and the resource description framework to integrate the various traditions and practices of information and knowledge organization. Uniquely, it covers both the domain-specific traditions and practices and the practices of the ‘metadata movement’ through a single lens – that of resource description in the broadest, semantic web sense.

This approach more readily accommodates coverage of the new Resource Description and Access (RDA) standard, which aims to move library cataloguing into the centre of the semantic web. The work surrounding RDA looks set to revolutionise the field of information organization, and this book will bring both the standard and its model and concepts into focus.

Key topics include:

• information resource attributes
• metadata for information retrieval
• metadata sources and quality
• economics and management of metadata
• knowledge organization systems
• the semantic web
• books and e-books, websites and audiovisual resources
• business and government documents
• learning resources
• the field of information/knowledge organization.

This book is essential reading for LIS students taking information organization courses at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, information professionals wishing to specialise in the metadata area, and existing metadata specialists who wish to update their knowledge.

August 2011; 288pp; paperback; 978-1-85604-667-1; £49.95