DC-2013 will explore questions regarding the persistence, maintenance, and preservation of metadata and descriptive vocabularies. The need for stable representations and descriptions spans all sectors including cultural heritage and scientific data, eGovernment, finance and commerce. Thus, the maintenance and management of metadata is essential to address the long term availability of information of legal, cultural and economic value.

On the web, data—and especially descriptive vocabularies—can change or vanish from one moment to the next. Nonetheless, the web increasingly forms the ecosystem for our vocabularies and our data. DC-2013 will bring together in Lisbon the community of metadata scholars and practitioners to engage in the exchange of knowledge and best practices in developing a sustainable metadata ecosystem.

DC-2013 will be collocated and run simultaneously with « iPRES 2013 » providing a rich environment for synergistic exploration of issues common to both communities.