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Metadata - What is it?

A common concern for online materials is tagging metadata. A simple definition of metadata are database fields of information which allow users to organize and find different objects housed in an archive. In other words, metadata is a label which allows you to find and identify the contents of a file or object.

Example Metadata

For instance, if you want to organize a searchable online collection of journal articles, each record would contain the article itself, and a set of metadata fields describing the object, such as the author, title, publication year, topics and subtopics.

What if a database is just a listing of articles without an actual text file of the journal article? Then the database would contain metadata only, and there would be no distinction between data and metadata.

Quick Review

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For each object, determine what kind of metadata might be needed.

1. A song in an Napster or iTunes music collection
   A: Song title, musicians, year, genre, album title, length, rating, last played.
2. A collection of paintings
   A: artist, title, technique, size, materials, year, ownership,...
3. Cans of soup in your pantry
   A: brand name, type of soup, ingredients nutrition information expiration date, cooking instructions, recipes, size of can, corporate address

Metadata Standards

Some organizations, especially those associated with libraries, have developed metadata standards with the hope that it will be possible to interchange data. Some of these include Dublin Core, IMS/SCORM (courses) and others

For most users, the metadata standard used will not be relevant, but will be used by different programs and online systems.

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Last Update: August 1, 2005