DC-2013 in Lisbon will explore questions regarding the persistence, maintenance, and preservation of metadata and descriptive vocabularies. The need for stable representations and descriptions spans all sectors including cultural heritage and scientific data, eGovernment, finance and commerce. Thus, the maintenance and management of metadata is essential to address the long term availability of information of legal, cultural and economic value. On the web, data -- and especially descriptive vocabularies -- can change or vanish from one moment to the next.