Digital long-term preservation is "the planning, resource allocation, and application of preservation methods and technologies necessary to ensure that digital information of continuing value remains accessible and usable" [Hed98]. Therefore, digital preservation has a strategic, organisational dimension aside the technical challenges it poses. A framework has to be provided for the administration and management of digital collection items. The use of metadata in any form - be it descriptive, structural, as well as administrative - is imperative in laying the foundations for the implementation of any strategy in this respect.
In the following, the concepts of metadata are summarised at first in Section 2.8.1. A special view is taken at metadata for digital preservation strategies in Section 2.8.2. Further, the use of metadata concerning issues of building an archive in general are presented. The domains discussed are authentication, rights management, resource discovery, and the management of the metadata itself, discussed in the sections 2.8.3 to 2.8.6, respectively.