The creation of robust metadata is of paramount importance for the success of any digital project. Metadata generally describes how the resource was digitized, its format, and what copyright restrictions apply, as well as other detailed information about the resource itself. A wide variety of metadata schemas currently exist, but as of yet no single metadata schema has been accepted as the ‘best metadata schema’ for every project.

This best practice document was created by the library's Large Scale Digitization Working Group to provide project coordinators with a set of guidelines “for creating rich and sharable metadata, which can be useful to metadata aggregators and end users” and to ensure access to library's rich resources.[1]