Metadata for digital libraries: state of the art and future directions

There's a JISC Techwatch report: Metadata for digital libraries: state of the art and future directions. From the summary:

' Whilst the richness and variety of information resources and digital collections that are made available on the Web have contributed enormously to the higher and further education community, for the average user, accessing information that spans multiple sources is increasingly a messy process involving a plethora of different systems, catalogues and interfaces. For those increasingly used to the ease-of-use of search tools such as Google and Yahoo this new and highly fluid environment can be a considerable barrier to accessing information from digital libraries and online collections.
This JISC TechWatch report argues that rectifying this problem requires above all the acceptance of the importance of metadata and the need for standardization and integration within the library community.'