Furthermore, Zeng and Qin offer a variety of aids throughout the work to assist the reader in learning specific concepts and practices. An array of helpful illustrations emphasizes or further delineates their points, typically taking the form of screenshots of applications, diagrams illustrating various principles, and tables of data. Each chapter ends with a selection of exercises for the student, all of which are also found on a companion website (www.metadataetc.org/book-website). The site likewise presents links to online information resources on metadata (duplicating the bibliographical references found at the end of each chapter in the book), quizzes, and further exercises. (These supplementary online materials are also available from the publisher on CD-ROM. I did not receive a copy of the disc for review.) The website in turn points to a wiki (www.metadataetc.org/wiki/index.php5?title=Main_Page) that supplies information on updates to the companion website, offers an online version of the book’s glossary, and devotes a section to listing errata found in the textbook.

Metadata covers much ground, as the brief outline above demonstrates. Considering the scope of the work, I posit the question, Did Zeng and Qin succeed in their mission to create a suitable textbook for the metadata student? The answer is yes, with some qualifications.

First, a hazard of employing narrative form in textbooks is the sometimes brief, early presentation of a concept not solidly defined until later in the text. This pitfall appears several times in Metadata. For example, the authors report on application profiles for education communities (49–50) well before they give a thorough account of the meaning and uses of application profiles (112–19). Often the reader can resolve any confusion with a consultation of the glossary. Many of the important terms the writers bring to bear in the text are defined here; definitions of lesser substance they confine only to the text body itself (e.g., the data encoding terms wrapper and compound elements and the concept of ontological modeling). When encountering such terms, the student must employ the index, thus establishing an inconvenient route to discovering the meaning of various unfamiliar expressions.

Next, Zeng and Qin acknowledge that their book does not provide a primer for encoding data for computer use (134). Metadata therefore requires some prerequisite knowledge of XML and Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML) to understand the encoding examples. This is one reason I caution against the neophyte, especially one lacking a technical background, using this text for self-study. For them, the writing style may be dense and at times opaque; for example, one section I find daunting—and the newcomer most likely also will—is the short but thickly technical explanation of the MPEG-7 standard, with which I was not previously familiar (77–79). Students here would benefit from the assistance of a mentor or practiced work colleague or consultation of other resources to understand the material put forward in such a concentrated manner.

These minor criticisms aside, Metadata and its companion websites offer an excellent foundation for advanced class instruction; the guiding hand of a knowledgeable classroom instructor is required to traverse some of the more difficult subject matter. Moreover, the writers explicitly state in the preface that “the text is not a step-by-step manual for creating metadata records” (xv–xvi). Most metadata course syllabi with which I am familiar call for extensive engagement with specific metadata content standards and records. Thus an instructor using this textbook in such a circumstance may find it challenging to provide in a single semester coursework on these standards in tandem with a full account of the readings offered in Metadata. An option to consider is a separate course for the practical application of metadata, which is alluded to by the authors (16).

The other audience to whom Zeng and Qin direct their work, metadata practitioners with appropriate background experience, will find this book a very good source for reference, review, and for expanding their knowledge on facets that lie outside their respective fields of expertise.