n. (abbr. METS)an XML-based standard for packaging digital objects with their descriptive, administrative, and structural metadataCundiff 2004, 53METS is an XML schema designed for the purpose of creating XML document instances that express the hierarchical structure of digital library objects, the names and locations of the files that comprise those digital objects, and the associated descriptive and administrative metadata. (Note that, at present, METS is limited to digital objects comprising text, images, audio, and video files.)Cantara 2005, 237Designed in conformance with the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) Reference Model, a METS document encapsulates digital objects and metadata as Information Packages for transmitting and/or exchanging digital objects to and from digital repositories, disseminating digital objects via the Web, and archiving digital objects for long-term preservation and access.Dappert and Enders 2010, 10The METS (Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard) is a specification for exchanging and storing metadata independent of specific project needs.Lavoie and Gartner 2013, 3The most widely-used framework for storing preservation metadata and linking it to other types of metadata is METS (Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard), an XML implementation of an OAIS Information Package.Gilliland 2016The Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS), developed by the Digital Library Federation and maintained by the Library of Congress, is often used for encoding descriptive, administrative, and structural metadata and digital surrogates at the item level for objects such as digitized photographs, maps, and correspondence from the collections described by finding aids and other collection or group-level metadata records.O’Meara and Stratton 2016, 60METS is frequently used as a wrapper schema to connect PREMIS and MODS elements with other recorded metadata like technical and structural elements. It can be used as a container during data transmission such as ingest into a repository.Sweetser and Orchard 2019, 353–354In the 2 workflows that do not use this task, spreadsheets that include higher-level information (i.e., higher-level hierarchical description like collection/series) are merged with Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS) records instead. Some of the other workflows use spreadsheets and METS records because unique IDs are not used.METS 2025The METS schema is a standard test for encoding descriptive, administrative, and structural metadata regarding objects within a digital library, expressed using the XML schema language of the World Wide Web Consortium.
Notes
The de facto standard began as an initiative of the Digital Library Federation, drafted by Jerome McDonough in 2001, and as of 2025 is maintained by the Library of Congress.
