Flying to Pluto

Abstract

This years' Dublin Core conference in Singapore has just ended, and I find myself again considering the difficulties of training people around the issues of interest in Dublin Core at the moment, some of which are percolating into the larger library community. Finding useful ways to convey the right balance of information about how the metadata world is developing, and what metadata practitioners (particularly librarians) need to know to participate fully in the discussions is a continuing issue. Part of the problem is that, in the DC world in particular, much of the conversation happens at a level of abstraction not comfortable to most librarians (particularly catalogers), and technically adept presenters hovering at their 50,000 foot comfort level find it difficult to avoid losing them along the way.