Special Session: Smart Metadata
Convenor: Liddy Nevile
Speakers will include:
   Neil McLean: Metadata for education
   Gottfried Zimmermann: Metadata for appliances
   Wendy Chisholm: Metadata for accessibility
   Eric Miller: Metadata and semantics
   Stephen Stead: Metadata and ontologies

This session will provide an opportunity for the DC community to work beyond standard Dublin Core (DC Simple and DC Qualified) and focus on the opportunities for DC metadata to form the infrastructure for interoperable metadata in a range of fields supporting such developments as the Semantic Web, the use of ontologies, etc. The idea is to consider the ways in which DC metadata can support the developments beyond the well-understood discoveryprocess that has driven DC developments to date.

Ontologies differ from standard thesauri in that they grow the connections and meanings are not fixed so much as the structure and rules for their continual growth; the Semantic Web aims to increase the opportunities for discovery about something beyond the established discovery of something, previously facilitated by DC metadata. In addition, metadata is being associated with resources, services, people, contexts, events and more. The creation of the metadata is dependent upon both human and automatic creation, but that is often far removed from its deployment in both time and context. Smart metadata will be created where it can be, at an appropriate time, and used where required, as needed. It will be useful and useable, whenever and wherever, which is the goal of interoperability.

Smart metadata won't be locked into applications but available whenever needed.