DAM New York 2019

As a die-hard English major at Mount Holyoke College, Laura Dawson dreamed she would move to New York City, work in publishing, and become A Great Novelist. While the move to NYC happened as planned, she was permanently sidetracked by the invention of the World Wide Web and its impact on first the book industry, and later music, libraries, and the information industry itself – and an obsession with the metadata evolution that happened as a result. This obsession led her to stints at companies such as Barnes & Noble, Rovi (now TiVo), Audible, ProQuest, SirsiDynix, and McGraw-Hill, as well as participating in standards bodies such as BISG, IDPF, W3C, ISNI, ISBN, and DOI. She is currently Metadata Analyst at HBO, and has written extensively in various publications about metadata and its myriad applications and issues.