METS: The Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard

The Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS) is a data communication standard for encoding descriptive, administrative, and structural metadata regarding objects within a digital library, expressed using the XML Schema Language of the World Wide Web Consortium. An initiative of the Digital Library Federation, METS is under development by an international editorial board and is maintained in the Network Development and MARC Standards Office of the Library of Congress. Designed in conformance with the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) Reference Model, a METS document encapsulates digital objects and metadata as Information Packages for transmitting and/or exchanging digital objects to and from digital repositories, disseminating digital objects via the Web, and archiving digital objects for long-term preservation and access. This paper represents an introduction to the METS standard and, through illustrated examples, how to build a METS document. (C) 2005 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.