Metadata and the Human Dimensions of Librarianship: Memory, Invisible Labor, and Professional Formation
Veronica Fu (rfu2@nd.edu)
Metadata is often treated as the invisible scaffolding of library systems—standardized, technical, and impersonal on its face. Yet beneath its structured fields lie traces of human labor, professional history, and the personal relationships that sustain our work as librarians. These dimensions don’t always surface in formal description, but for those of us who encounter metadata daily, even a single catalog record can carry unexpected weight. It was an ordinary moment in my workday: reviewing ne