Contemporary theory has replaced the traditional cataloguing paradigm (Taylor, 1993) in favour of the adoption of metadata methodologies. The tools for the discovery of bibliographic resources have been (and will increasingly be) placed within the language of the Semantic Web. This evolution accentuated the granularity and atomisation of the data. There was a breaking of the compact, closed record in favour of a new open structure. Individual data are assembled and each of them can have connections with other data through relationships. It began:

• • pragmatically and on a technological level with the use of MARC in the mid-1960s

• • consciously on a conceptual level with FRBR at the end of the last century.

In particular, FRBR emphasised individual elements with respect to the record as a whole. FRBR also favoured identifying the data of bibliographic resources (or simply resources) by assigning ‘high’, ‘medium’, or ‘low’ values to individual records.

The valuation of resources was the precondition for shifting from records management to data management, which was a process that involved identifying and connecting data related to:

• • a work

• • an author

• • a subject.

Data are formulated through terms defined by controlled vocabularies and ontologies (the shared and explicit formal representations of specific knowledge domains).

Data management differs from traditional records management and is typical of web-based work. However, data management reinforces the rigour of bibliographic analysis (see Section 4.4) in new technological contexts. An essential argument is that the new record (or dataset) shows a higher respect for the source of information than the traditional record.

Metadata are used in every field and activity of human knowledge. They tend to describe the sets of real-world objects. Metadata may refer to or be a part of, an analogue (a person, a work, an art object, a concept, etc.) and a digital collection. Deriving from this is an extended vision of the metadata field that embraces all the cross-domains that are necessary for the research experience. In fact, in the Semantic Web, there is no distinction between bibliographic data and other kinds of data. There are only linked data: shareable, modular and reusable. Linked data are created, enriched and modified by organisations that are authoritatively active in their fields of specialisation.