This project sought to improve information-access systems for large digital collections by incorporating metadata about the documents' genres. Genre metadata facilitates information retrieval and use. For example, people rarely have to read every word to understand a document's meaning. Instead, they start by identifying the kinds of documents they are faced with, then use different types of documents in appropriate ways. For example, a grant proposal is used differently from a syllabus, a product brochure or a bank statement. Information-access systems would be more useful for many tasks if they could similarly distinguish the form and purpose of documents (that is, their genres).