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.

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.