Metadata play a fundamental role in both DLs and SDIs. Commonly defined as structured data about data or data which describe attributes of a resource or more simply information about data it is an essential requirement for locating and evaluating available data. Therefore this book focuses on the study of different metadata aspects which contribute to a more efficient use of DLs and SDIs. The three main issues addressed are: the management of nested collections of resources the interoperability between metadata schemas and the integration of information retrieval techniques to the discovery services of geographic data catalogs (contributing in this way to avoid metadata content heterogeneity).