ABSTRACT
When metadata emerged as a possible solution for resource discovery in a World Wide Web environment in the mid-1990s, many thought that
an advantage of metadata, as compared to traditional bibliographic data for library catalogs, was that metadata could be created and maintained by individuals with little or no training or experience in cataloging or in dexing. (For a concise history of the term and concept “metadata,” see Caplan 2003, 1-3.) Indeed the vision behind many of the earliest metadata schemes or initiatives, for example, PICS (Platform for Internet Content Selection (W3C 1997)), or even the use of “META” tags within the HTML standard itself (Weibel 1996), was that resource description could be accomplished by the authors of web documents at the time the documents were created or published on the World Wide Web.
