I know where I am going, do you?

Abstract

Serials are neither simple to describe nor to use. Information technologies require not just any standards, but unambiguously defined data elements. We cannot forget the reasons for and importance of citation, not only for the user of the library, but for the crucial scientific practice of reproducibility of results. We need to change practices, but it is not at all clear how far we must accommodate the purposes of other organizations doing other things for other purposes. There are and will be many ways in which we can use externally generated metadata for our purposes. But for any automated use of such metadata we must first guarantee that the content, not just the metadata scheme, is fit for our purposes. If we get confused about what we are doing, for whom, and why, we may end up creating metadata that no one anywhere finds useful, and upon discovering that, we will once again be asking ourselves "Where in the world are we going?"