Metadata

Metadata is 'data about data', it is the information that we use online to archive and locate a resource. Metadata uses uses the information about a resource making it possible to catalog the information online and also making a user able to locate that resource with little difficulty.

This PDF is really useful in helping to understand Metadata -  http://www.niso.org/publications/press/UnderstandingMetadata.pdf

What Is Metadata?

Metadata is structured information that describes, explains, locates, or otherwise makes it easier to retrieve, use, or manage an information resource. Metadata is often called data about data or information about information. The term metadata is used differently in different communities. Some use it to refer to machine understandable information, while others use it only for records that describe electronic resources. In the library environment, metadata is commonly used for any formal scheme of resource description, applying to any type of object, digital or non-digital. Traditional library cataloging is a form of metadata; MARC 21 and the rule sets used with it, such as AACR2, are metadata standards. Other metadata schemes have been developed to describe various types of textual and non-textual objects including published books, electronic documents, archival finding aids,  art objects, educational and training materials, and scientific data sets.

There are three main types of metadata these are;

• Descriptive metadata - this describes a resource for discovery and identification. It can include elements such as title, abstract, author and keywords.
• Structural metatdata - this indicates how compound objects are put together, for example, how pages are ordered to form chapters.
• Administrative metadata - this provides information to help manage a resource, such as when and how it was create, file type and other technical information.

To show how Metadata can be, used we cataloged some books by writing the metadata of the books on post it notes. This is showing a basic interpretation of how descriptive metadata could work. For these books we wanted to find the metadata for these elements;

• Title
• Author 
• Publisher
• Number of pages
• Genre
• date published

These are very simple elements but all books have this information which mean that cataloging and organizing the books becomes very simple. (ignore the fact they have ISBN numbers).

The images below show the metadata, in some of the pictures the metadata cannot be seen as the post it notes are very small but I assure you that all book have been processed and all of the information about the elements above have been noted down.

Books with there metadata

In the below picture you can just make out the information on the book the wicked heart. from the image you can see that the;

Title - The wicked heart
Author - Christopher Pike
Publisher - Hodders children's books
No. pages - 244
Genre - Horror
Date - 1993

The book, the wicked heart.

Two more books with metadata information

three books with metadata

The information that has been gathered could then be used to organize the book into categories. Just from these six categories there are many ways in which the books could be cataloged for example, the could be organized according to date published or into alphabetical order of the title.

If these were online documents then this metadata would be used to help find them in search engines such as Google, the user could simply enter the title and all of the relevant information with these keywords in there metadata will be shown to the user.