Correspondence: Carol Owens, Email: carol.owens9@btinternet.com

¹led the launch of the BBC's innovative work on metadata in 1998, after a long career in editing, operational management and internal consulting with the Corporation. Her team won the Royal Television Society Technology Innovation Award with the BBC enterprise data model SMEF™ in 2000, and Carol was made a fellow of the Society in 2001. She also chaired the European Broadcasting Union's P/Meta project to define a business-to-business content exchange scheme. Both SMEF and P/Meta are still in use. She and her team transferred to Siemens in 2004 and in March 2008 Carol moved to Serco Solutions as Head of Media Strategy to start a new sector.

Abstract

This paper summarizes a panel discussion held at the 2008 Henry Stewart Digital Asset Management Conference in London. It not only captures experience from people who have been involved in enterprise metadata management for many years, but also offers some novel insights from a relative newcomer to the field. The discussion covers the use and governance of metadata and taxonomies in digital asset management, the motivation of users to create the data and some ethical implications of description.