Metadata research has emerged as a discipline cross-cutting many domains, focused on the provision of distributed descriptions (often called annotations) to Web resources or applications. Such associated descriptions are supposed to serve as a foundation for advanced services in many application areas, including search and location, personalization, federation of repositories and automated delivery of information. Indeed, the Semantic Web is in itself a concrete technological framework for ontology-based metadata. For example, Web-based social networking requires metadata describing people and their interrelations, and large databases with biological information use complex and detailed metadata schemas for more precise and informed search strategies.There is a wide diversity in the languages and idioms used for providing meta-descriptions, from simple structured text in metadata schemas to formal annotations using ontologies, and the technologies for storing, sharing and exploiting meta-descriptions are also diverse and evolve rapidly. In addition, there is a proliferation of schemas and standards related to metadata, resulting in a complex and moving technological landscape — hence, the need for specialized knowledge and skills in this area.The Handbook of Metadata, Semantics and Ontologies is intended as an authoritative reference for students, practitioners and researchers, serving as a roadmap for the variety of metadata schemas and ontologies available in a number of key domain areas, including culture, biology, education, healthcare, engineering and library science.
