METS (Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard)
METS is a framework for encoding metadata about digital objects
There are five major sections of a METS object:
- Descriptive metadata (can point to an external standard such as MARC, Dublin Core, FGDC
- Administrative metadata (can also point to an external schema which might contain master/derivative relationships, migration information, copyright information, etc)
- File Groups identifies all files associated with a digital object: uncompressed tiff, pdf, djvu, jpeg thumbnails, etc
- Structural map: describes the object structure: book, toc, chapters, index, etc.
- Behavior: can point to executable code that customizes the behavior, for example run spss script on this object to generate a chart.