Metadata is data about data…and in HMML’s case, includes information about a manuscript like author, date, and location, which needs to be determined and uploaded using internationally recognized standards for a manuscript to be searchable and findable. Catherine Walsh, HMML’s new Metadata Librarian (above), enjoys the challenges her work presents every day. She said that cataloguers, “Submit names of authors to me and I create authorities, but it’s difficult to categorize them. Are they Western authors who traveled in Syria, or whose works made their way across continents? Arabic authors translated into English? Eastern Christian authors with Islamic names? It speaks to the complicated interactions amongst cultures and how much exchange was actually going on, even before our current era of globalization.”