For the Wikipedia policy, see Wikipedia:Metadata.
Welcome to CWAnswers
CWAnswers is your guide to the sprawling world wide web. The directory aims to provide a useful guide made by users. You can share your knowledge as well - simply sign up and edit your first entry. For questions just contact the team at support - at - cwanswers.com.
Weblinks for Metadata
Top 10 for Metadata
Things about Metadata you find nowhere else.
Select content modules
For the Wikipedia policy, see Wikipedia:Metadata.
Metadata (meta data, or sometimes metainformation) is "data about other data", of any sort in any media. An item of metadata may describe an individual datum, or content item, or a collection of data including multiple content items and hierarchical levels, for example a database schema. In data processing, metadata provides information about, or documentation of, other data managed within an application or environment. This commonly defines the structure or schema of the primary data. The term should be used with caution as all data is about something, and is therefore "metadata" in a sense, and vice versa.
For example, metadata would document data about data elements or attributes, (name, size, data type, etc) and data about records or data structures (length, fields, columns, etc) and data about data (where it is located, how it is associated, ownership, etc.). Metadata may include descriptive information about the context, quality and condition, or characteristics of the data. It may be recorded with high or low granularity.
Purpose
Metadata provides context for data.
Metadata is used to facilitate the understanding, characteristics, and management usage of data. The metadata required for effective data management varies with the type of data and context of use. In a library, where the data is the content of the titles stocked, metadata about a title would typically include a description of the content, the author, the publication date and the physical location.
Book
Examples of metadata regarding a book would be the title, author, date of publication, subject, a unique identifier (such an International Standard Book Number), its dimensions, number of pages, and the language of the text.
Photograph
Metadata for a photograph would typically include the date and time at which it was taken and details of the camera settings (such as focal length, aperture, exposure). Many digital cameras record metadata in exchangeable image file format (EXIF).
Audio
Audio recordings may also be labelled with metadata. When audio formats moved from analogue to digital, it became possible to embed this metadata within the digital content itself.
Metadata can be used to name, describe, catalogue and indicate ownership or copyright for a digital audio file, and its presence makes it much easier to locate a specific audio file within a group - through use of a search engine that accesses the metadata. As different digital audio formats were developed, it was agreed that a standardized and specific location would be set aside within the digital files where this information could be stored.
As a result, almost all digital audio formats, including mp3, broadcast wav and AIFF files, have similar standardized locations that can be populated with metadata. This "information about information" has become one of the great advantages of working with digital audio files - since the catalogue and descriptive information that makes up the metadata is built right into the audio file itself, ready for easy access and use. You no longer need to consult a paper catalogue or product packaging to find out more about a particular file.
