collection description The description of collections is important in the context of network library services and an important underpinning for developing a collective resource. The creation of collection descriptions allows the owners or curators of collections to disclose information about their existence and availability to interested parties. Although collection descriptions may take the form of unstructured textual documents (for example a set of Web pages describing a collection), there are significant advantages in describing collections using structured, open and standardised formats. Such descriptions would enable: users to discover and locate collections of interest; users to perform searches across multiple collections in a controlled way; software to perform such tasks on behalf of users, based on known user preferences. (Excerpt from this source) 50 215 2.9 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/sites/all/datacharts/hc/3121-chart-wp.html