This study is a questionnaire survey of practicing catalogers seeking to determine: how catalogers value flexibility in metadata schemas, how catalogers value flexibility in comparison to other qualities in metadata schemas, and how flexibility factors into catalogers„¢ evaluations of MARC/AACR2 and simple Dublin Core. For the purpose of this study flexibility was operationalized into three different aspects: (1) the flexibility to represent information needs of different material types, (2) the flexibility to adapt to evolving cataloging standards, and (3) flexibility in rules to allow catalogers to utilize personal judgment. Twenty-one participants responded. They supported the first two aspects of flexibility, but supported having strict schema rules over flexible ones. Flexibility was considered in evaluations of metadata schemas, but not considered to be the most important quality of a metadata schema both generally and when evaluating Dublin Core and MARC/AACR2
