Organizing Internet Resources and the Development of Metadata

There exist lots of differences between information resources on the Internet and those in the traditional libraries. In order to retrieve and utilize digital information effectively in the coming era of information network, libraries have to explore how Internet resources are organized. Using search engines and subject gateway services are two common ways to retrieve and utilize Internet resources. Search engines are based on robot to extract metadata, which are automatic and are cheap to create. Subject gateway services add value through intellectual effort, and are correspondingly expensive. But neither approach is complete as users are interested in resources at various levels of granularity and aggregation which may not be satisfied by either of these two simplified approaches. In order to use the Internet resources effectively, the establishment of metadata is very important.This article describes the definitions and functions of metadata, a variety of metadata creators and sources, the different formats of metadata, the level of structure and fullness of metadata, and finally the responses and reactions from people in library field.[Article content in Chinese]