The Social Life of Metadata: Arguments from Utility for Shared Database Management (A Response to Banush and LeBlanc).

In Banush and LeBlanc (2007), the utilitarianism of Bentham was resurrected and offered as a "philosophical backdrop for dealing with competing library choices." This article discusses two serious failures in that article: the failure to situate utility in the current context (shared bibliographic databases, cooperative cataloging programs, automated data manipulation, and exchange) and the simplistic assumptions about library users and their diverse needs which allow the authors to reduce all metadata- related issues to a simple managerial task of triage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]