This paper presents the metadata schema for describing language resources (LRs) currently under development for the needs of META-SHARE, an open distributed facility for the exchange and sharing of LRs. An essential ingredient in its setup is the existence of formal and standardized LR descriptions, cornerstone of the interoperability layer of any such initiative. The description of LRs is granular and abstractive, combining the taxonomy of LRs with an inventory of a structured set of descriptive elements, of which only a minimal subset is obligatory; the schema additionally proposes recommended and optional elements. Moreover, the schema includes a set of relations catering for the appropriate inter-linking of resources. The current paper presents the main principles and features of the metadata schema, focusing on the description of text corpora and lexical / conceptual resources.