h general Representation 
Information (e.g., format information) and specific Representation Information (e.g., 
meanings of individual fields within a dataset). Often the general information will be 
available in an external repository, but the local repository may need to maintain the 
instance-specific information. It is likely that many repositories would wish to keep local 
copies of relevant Representation Information; however, this may not be practical in all 
cases. Even where a repository strives t