This paper examines how future metadata capabilities could enable academic libraries to exploit information on the emerging Semantic Web in their library catalogues. Whereas current metadata architectures treat the Web as a simple means of interchanging bibliographic data that have been created by libraries, this paper suggests that academic libraries could use the Semantic Web as a source of rich metadata that can be retrieved and inserted into bibliographic records to enhance the user's information searches and to expand the role of the academic library catalogue as a research tool rather than a mere locating device. The paper uses examples from the fields of rare books, literary criticism, and film studies to illustrate how academic libraries, by shifting their emphasis from cataloguing standards to Web information evaluation, can play a new and exciting role in the development of electronic information services.