Enterprise Wide Search 12: Sofia Zapounidou - Metadata, Meaning and the Machine
In this episode, co-hosts Emma McGrattan and Ole Olesen-Bagneux welcome Sofia Zapounidou, Team Lead at the Publications Office of the European Commission and a lifelong champion of metadata, identifiers, and meaning in a machine-readable world. Drawing on her background in library and information science, Sofia offers a unique perspective on the evolution of data work—from card catalogs to linked open data—and what today’s AI and data communities can learn from the past.
Together, they explore:
Sofia’s work leading a linked data transformation at the European Commission.
What librarians have always known—and technologists often forget—about user context and information architecture..
Why data migration is an opportunity to improve data quality, not just preserve it.
How FRBR (and now LRM) reshaped library metadata as a graph-based model.
Why data needs continuous curation, and how to build a culture that supports it.
🎧 Tune in for a conversation that bridges the gap between tradition and innovation, reminding us that behind every intelligent machine is a century of human effort to describe the world clearly.
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