Metadata.(Book review)

Metadata. By Marcia Lei Zeng and Jian Qin. New York: Neal-Schuman, 2008. 365p. $65.00 softbound (ISBN 978-1-55570-635-7/1-55570-635-5).

Professors Marcia Lei Zeng and Jian Qin each have several years of experience as professional educators and researchers in the fields of knowledge organization and metadata (365). One fruit of their collective labors is the recently published Metadata, a comprehensive assessment of the theory and practice of metadata design and implementation. The authors have endeavored to take a "unique, enlightening, and holistic approach" (xvii) to the subject of metadata by fashioning a dual-purpose manual: a textbook for students and an "instructional guide" (xv) for metadata specialists.

Metadata is divided into four parts. The first is dedicated to basic principles and definitions and includes chapter 2, "Current Standards," a survey of the semantics and structures of various metadata schemes and content standards, many common in library and related institutions (e.g., Machine-Readable Cataloging (MARC), Encoded Archival Description (EAD), and Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata (CSDGM)), others less popular (e.g., …