Transitioning to the Next Generation of Metadata. OCLC Research Report

Abstract

The OCLC Research Library Partners Metadata Managers Focus Group, first established in 1993, is one of the longest-standing groups within the OCLC Research Library Partnership (RLP), a transnational network of research libraries. The Focus Group provides a forum for administrators responsible for creating and managing metadata in their institutions to share information about topics of common concern and to identify metadata management issues. The issues raised by the Focus Group are pursued by OCLC Research in support of the RLP and inform OCLC products and services. This report, "Transitioning to the Next Generation of Metadata," synthesizes six years (2015-2020) of OCLC Research Library Partners Metadata Managers Focus Group discussions and what they may foretell for the "next generation of metadata." The firm belief that metadata underlies all discovery regardless of format, now and in the future, permeates all Focus Group discussions. This report traces how metadata is evolving and considers the impact this transition may have on library services, posing such questions as: (1) Why is metadata changing? (2) How is the creation process changing? (3) How is the metadata itself changing? and (4) What impact will these changes have on future staffing requirements, and how can libraries prepare? Transitioning to the next generation of metadata is an evolving process, intertwined with changing standards, infrastructures, and tools. Together, Focus Group members came to a common understanding of the challenges, shared possible approaches to address them, and inoculated these ideas into other communities that they interact with. The document concludes with some observations on the forecasted impact of the next generation of metadata on the wider library community. [For "Transitioning to the Next Generation of Metadata: An Annotated Bibliography of Selected OCLC Research Hanging Together Blogs. OCLC Research Supplemental," see ED617938.]