Creating Metadata for electronic works

I read this morning that the Library of Congress has announced several partnerships within the private sector to help to create metadata standards for digitally-born records - specifically for photographs, films, sound recordings, videogames, and cartoons. Why should this be exciting?

Well, I must admit that electronic records scare me a bit. When I think about how many years it's taken me to feel comfortable with describing the various physical formats that I work with within my job - books, journals, archival collections, DVD's and CD's, etc - and then think about how to approach a record that has been created digitally, I find it pretty intimidating. Here I am learning all the idiosyncracies of how to catalog formats that have been around for decades or even centuries and I'm expected to learn how to catalog and describe and potentially archive formats that change so rapidly that the systems they were created on are often outdated within months?

Having standards set and maintained helps to ease my mind. I'm sure that the day is not so far off that I may just be called on to catalog and maintain access in our online catalog to the electronic versions of much of what we're now used to seeing in print. Our E-books collection may continue to grow; perhaps we'll replace our DVD and audio collections with online access; our archives will begin to recieve digitally-born photograph collections and electronic files. And from an archival perspective, it's just mind-blowing to think about how we'll maintain access to these things as technology continues to change and upgrade. Overwhelming, but exciting.