Metadata (PDF)

Richard Gartner is a librarian and academic who has specialised in the field of metadata and digital libraries for over twenty years. He is currently the Digital Librarian at the Warburg Institute in London. Previously, he was for sixteen years the New Media Librarian for the Bodleian Library in Oxford, where he was responsible for the introduction of the Internet into the Library, its first CD-ROM network and its first digital imaging projects. More recently he was a lecturer at King's College London where he taught and researched metadata and digital curation.

Throughout his career, his research has concentrated on metadata, a subject in which he has published widely.  He is on the editorial board for METS (Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard), a widely-used metadata standard in digital libraries.  He has also maintained a long-term interest in international librarianship, which has taken him in the past to China, Bangladesh, India, Taiwan, Uzbekistan and Armenia amongst other countries.

“In Metadata: Shaping Knowledge from Antiquity to the Semantic Web, Gartner, the digital librarian at the Warburg Institute at the University of London, thoroughly covers not only the history of metadata, but how it affects and forms knowledge and culture. … The author concludes the work with recent advances in metadata creation—metadata produced via Web 2.0, crowdsourcing, and folksonomies. This is a meticulous overview of metadata and its history and application. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals.” (A. Hollister, Choice, Vol. 54 (9), May, 2017)

“The book presents an enjoyable bird’s-eye view of metadata and related concepts, with outstanding examples accessible to non-experts. … I highly recommend the book.” (H. I. Kilov, Computing Reviews, May, 2017)

“The book covers continuous evolution of metadata from the history of cataloguing to the modern forms … . This book will attract readers interested in metadata, the semantic web, metadata ontologies, digital libraries, and semantic retrieval. So, it is highly recommended to information professionals, digital librarians and students. The book is well structured and motivating. The results of Gartner’s effort are very much worth reading due to his librarianship perspective on metadata.” (Elaheh Hossseini, Information Research, informationr.net, Vol. 22 (1), March, 2017)

“All of the usual elements of a book on metadata are present and correct … I would urge you to read this book if you are new to cataloguing or if you are old in cataloguing and world-weary about our professional mission. It’s a book to provoke your own thoughts, and quite possibly to give to your manager if you suspect they are unsure why metadata, why cataloguing and, therefore, why you and your team matter.” (Anne Welsh, Catalogue and Index, cilip.org.uk, Issue 186, March, 2017)



“The book provides an overview of existing metadata approaches and standards such as MARC,