Metadata are crucial for discovery and access by providing contextual, technical, and administrative information in a standard form. Yet metadata are also sites of tension between sociocultural representations, resource constraints, and standardized systems. Formal and informal interventions may be interpreted as quality issues, political acts to…

Explains the efforts of the ICSTI (International Council for Scientific and Technical Information) Group on Interdisciplinary Searching to identify and describe problems of interdisciplinary searching and to propose solutions. Problems are summarized in six areas: database coverage and technical content, bibliographic information, textual content,…

Discussion of indexing needs for film and video images focuses on appropriate access points for the storage and retrieval of individual shots which have not yet been included in a production. A study at the National Film Board of Canada is described that investigated ways to index non-art images. (18 references) (LRW)

Discussion of the adequacy of indexing for interdisciplinary areas focuses on women's studies. A study that examined access to women's studies journals through standard indexes and abstracts is described, and results are reported which indicate that most journals are not sufficiently indexed and that there is a need for an online index. (six…