Spatial Data Infrastructures and related concepts -- A metadata infrastructure for the management of nested collections -- Interoperability between metadata standards -- The use of disambiguated thesauri to improve information retrieval -- Integrating the concepts within the components of a Spatial Data Infrastructure -- Conclusions and future work.

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).