Information Standards: Introduction

EDITOR'S SUMMARY Standards and interoperable systems are crucial in the work of information professionals, applying to bibliographic descriptions, taxonomies, data exchange formats and markup and more recently for linking data. They enable access to archival information and associations to data in other contexts. The ASIS&T Standards Committee represents the Association with the International Standards Organization, the American National Standards Institute and related organizations and serves as an informative liaison with the membership. This special section explores standards as they relate to metadata for linking library data, recognizing MARC as an early and evolving standard and reviewing standards specifically for archival description. Discussions of records management at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Battelle Memorial Institute and the Mayo Clinic illustrate the necessity for standards‐driven metadata and systems within large, complex organizations. The Program for Cooperative Cataloging and OCLC's Virtual International Authority File exemplify projects working toward best practices for linking data.