Admininstrators use the Manage a metadata usage page to specify the descriptive information to be extracted from online documents for cataloguing these documents in other library systems. 

Metdata elements contain the descriptive information that accompanies an online document such as Title, Author, Date, etc.  Any number of metadata elements can be defined, according to the requirements of the particular library.

These metadata items are used to customise the forms with which the librarian reviews, catalogues and publishes scanned documents in InterPublish.  Documents can be scanned for metadata with reference to either a text-based authorities file or a table in a SQL database on the network.  Creating and managing metadata items are therefore a powerful tool for customising InterPublish to the specific workflow and cataloguing requirements of a library and for automating much of the cataloguing and publishing process for documents published on the internet.

InterPublish does the following with the metadata items defined through this page:

1. takes the information provided and searches for these metadata items in documents on the sites being scanned
2. creates matching metadata fields in the Review & publish and the Review & alert forms for working with candidate documents
3. maps these metadata fields in InterPublish to corresponding Dublin Core or MARC fields to be populated when the document is exported to other library systems

Metadata items can be mapped to either MARC tags (eg 245a for Title) or Dublin Core elements.