UC San Diego Library

Libraries, archives and museums cannot afford to think about collections only in the context of the local community. Sharing benefits our users, and we can no longer assume our users will come in through the "front door." Cultural institutions must get their content "into the flow" where working users will discover and reap the benefits of digital content delivery. The speakers in this session will describe the benefits of creating repurposable metadata discoverable in multiple environments; discuss some of the obstacles challenging institutions to create sharable metadata; compare two mechanisms for creating repurposable metadata; and share some success stories where leveraging metadata in social networking environments helped users discover the breadth and depth of an institution's collections.