An Emergent Theory of Digital Library Metadata is a reaction to the current digital library
landscape that is being challenged with growing online collections and changing user
expectations. The theory provides the conceptual underpinnings for a new approach which moves
away from expert defined standardised metadata to a user driven approach with users as metadata
co-creators. Moving away from definitive authoritative metadata to a system that reflects the
diversity of users' terminologies it changes the current focus on metadata simplicity and
efficiency to one of metadata enriching which is a continuous and evolving process of data
linking. From predefined description to information conceptualised contextualised and filtered
at the point of delivery. By presenting this shift this book provides a coherent structure in
which future technological developments can be considered.
