What is Metadata?

Metadata is nothing but it is a structural or descriptive information that gives additional information about a particular information or data. In this article, we will understand types of metadata, functions of metadata and more.

What is Metadata?

Metadata is simply called as data about the data, it is used to organize the information, manage the information and understand the information. Metadata was found in different contexts, including digital files, libraries, websites and databases. It plays a major role in management the data, retrieving the information, organization of the content with different domains.

Metadata includes a wide range of information depends upon the content which they are used. Let us consider an example in the real world, in digital photography context, metadata can include the details like time of the photo, the date of the photo was taken, coordination of the GPS, it indicates where the photo was taken and even the data or information about the photographer. In document context, metadata includes the details like author of the document, title of the document, creation date of the document and keywords of the document.

Types of Metadata

There are mainly five types of metadata as shown below.

Types of Metadata

1. Preservation Metadata

Preservation metadata is nothing but it is the type of the metadata which is designed to be the long term accessibility of the digital assets. It is served as a comprehensive record for the necessary information for the preservation and management of digital collections, most of the context of digital libraries, museums and other cultural institutions.

Preservation metadata is used to stores the information in long time with digital assets. It includes the information about the authentications and preserve actions taken on the content. This metadata preserved the necessary information for the long-term preservation and manages the digital assets, ensuring their integrity and usability over time.

Example: This metadata includes the information about the formats of the file, migration strategies, schemas of the metadata and preservation actions for maintaining the data accessibility. It supports the activity related to the digital preservation like migration of the data and risk management.

2. Descriptive Metadata

Descriptive metadata described about the detailed information of the content and the characteristics of the particular piece of the data, enables the users to the understand the meaning of the content and context of the content. This metadata plays a main role for enabling users to the discover and understand the digital resources effectively. The descriptive metadata describe about the title, author/creator, subject/keywords, abstract/summary, date, format, languages, identifier, spatial coverage, temporal coverage, rights information.

Descriptive metadata is used to describes the content and providing the information such as author of the content, title of the content, summary of the content, theme of the content, dates, key points of the content. It is helped to the users for better understanding the content.

Example: This metadata type consists of attributes like title, author, subjects, keywords, abstracts and other description parts of the document what the data describe about. In the digital context like documents, descriptive metadata also includes the details of the documentation such as location, creation date, format and size of the file.

3. Technical Metadata

It provide the detailed information about technical characteristics and properties of the digital asset. It served a main role of the facilitate the management, processing and interoperability of the digital resources across the different platforms and the environments.

Technical metadata is used to describe about the technical words of the content i.e. specifications of the hardware, encoding, formats of the file, resolution of the file, software used in the content etc.,

Example: This metadata tells about the format of the file, size of the file, color space, method of compression, software is used to create and manipulates the data. Technical metadata can be includes the Exchangeable Image File Format (EXIF) data contains the settings of the camera and other technical information.

4. Structural Metadata

In structural metadata, it provides the information about organization, about arrangements and relationships with the digital asset. It helps to the users to navigate and understand the internal structure and the hierarchical components. It is worked for interact with the content and accessing the content, it enables the users to navigate with the difficult information architectures and receive the data efficiently.

The purpose of structural metadata is to provide details about the organization and relationships within the content or dataset. Let us consider an example, In a book, structural metadata can be include the title of the chapter, headings of the chapter, contents, indexes, etc.,

Example: In structural metadata, it can be include about the chapters, about the sections, about the headings, about paragraphs and the page sequences. This multimedia includes the multimedia files such as videos and records, it includes timestamp, markers and pointers.

5. Administrative Metadata

Administrative metadata is nothing but it gives the information about the management, about the administration and governance of the digital assets with its lifecycle. It served as a foundation for the resource management, traceability and compliance with the organizational policies and its standards. Metadata can enabled the efficient

Administrative metadata is used to data provides the administration of the content and management. This metadata might be include the ownership of the data, right to the access, update/create the date and formats of the files.

Example: This metadata can include the details like author, date of the creation, access permissions, history and restrictions of the Digital Rights Management (DRM). It also describe about the storage of the data, strategies for the preservation.

Functions of Metadata

Below are some functions of metadata.

Functions of Metadata

• Management: Metadata can supports the content management and content administration entire its lifecycle, with the tasks i.e. control of the version, control of the access, rights of the management. It supports the different management tasks and different tasks and the activities, data resources are properly controlled and maintained with an organisation. Metadata enabled the data management practices and accessibility of the digital resources of the entire lifecycle.
• Identification: Metadata can helps the identify uniquely and shows the differences of individual content or information. Metadata can be assigned and managed the unique identifiers or tags for the each data asset and it enabling the efficient identification and retrieve entire the various platforms. By provide these unique identifiers and establishing the conventions, metadata enabled the perfect identification, retrieves the management of the data assets and supports the wide range of organizational processes.
• Preservation: This metadata provides that certain information used for long-term preservation and captured the digital assets and maintained the management of digital assets. Preservation metadata captured the information about the technical, administrative, decision making actions. The capturing and manages the preserving metadata, organization that can be integrity, reliability and the usability of its digital collections, ensuring the accessibility for future generations.
• Discovery: In Discovery, descriptive metadata utilize the discovery of content by searching the keywords, searching the subjects or other attributes. Metadata can be served as the discovering the related information or data by provide the attributes, relatable keywords that helped that the user can easily locate the resource and access the resources.
• Navigation: Navigation is nothing but structural metadata is understand the structure of difficult content or dataset and organise the complex datasets into easily understandable to the users. It plays a major role to enabling the users to explore and access the data resources with the repositories or collections of the soft copy.
• Interoperability: Metadata standards can enable the interoperability between the different platforms and systems, allowing to the exchange and data integration. Metadata can play the main role for promote the interoperability by provides the standard formats, structures and vocabularies for the attributes of the representing data and relationship along with the different environments.

Importance of Metadata

• Metadata is important to “Data Discovery“. It is helps to the users to find the relative data by giving information about the content, characteristics, context, etc.,
• Metadata can easily “Understanding the data”. Metadata can implement the understanding the meaning and significance of the content, including the its source, its format, and its structure.
• Metadata can be improved the “quality of the data” by giving information related to the completeness of the content and consistency of the content.
• It can be manage the data, organize the data, divide into the categories within in the organization.
• Metadata can be involves the “interoperability” by containing description of the content that allows the different systems to utilize the understand the data exchanging the data.

Frequently Asked Questions on Metadata – FAQs

What is the main purpose of metadata?

To put it simply, metadata is the description and synopsis of your data that is used to categorize, arrange, label, and comprehend data—a process that greatly facilitates sorting and searching for data.

What are the examples of Metadata?

Music files, webpages, digital images, library catalogues are some of the examples of metadata.

Who used the metadata in day to day life?

Digital marketers, government agencies, IT professionals, researchers and academics, database administrators are used the metadata in day to day life.

What is the difference between data and metadata?

Data is a collection of unprocessed facts that, when cleansed, processed, and arranged, can be used to identify relevant information. Contrarily, metadata is information about information.