As more information becomes “born digital”, metadata creation is increasingly becoming part of the information creation process. Current metadata schemes inherit much of the library cataloging tradition, which has shown limitations on representing “born digital” type of resources. Through analysis of issues of metadata schemes and review of metadata research and projects, the authors propose an ontology-based approach to building a modular metadata model in which semantics and syntax may be integrated to suit the needs for representing “born digital” resources. The authors use an learning object ontology as an example to demonstrate how the semantics and syntax may be built into a modular model for metadata.