Metadata

Last updated on 2025-04-29 | Edit this page

Overview

Questions

  • What is metadata?
  • What are major types of metadata?

Objectives

After completing this episode, participants should be able to

  • understand metadata basics,
  • differentiate metadata from data,
  • differentiate the major types of metadata,
  • apply metadata concepts to practical challenges,
  • recognise the role of metadata in the humanities.

Metadata Types, Functions, and Contexts

Metadata is a form of data that describes other data. Metadata provides meaningful information that makes it easier to find, identify, understand, handle, and preserve the primary data.

Data itself can be structured or “raw,” meaning unprocessed or unstructured. In contrast, metadata is always processed and structured, designed to be understandable by both humans and machines. Metadata serves a functional purpose, such as organising materials in a catalog or enabling the search and retrieval of resources in a database. It helps convey essential attributes of data, such as its origin, time period, and geographic coverage.

There are three major types of metadata:

Descriptive metadata describes a resource for purposes such as discovery and identification. It can include elements such as title, author, date of creation, medium, dimension, and keywords.

Descriptive metadata is crucial for discovering and identifying resources like books, journal articles, or digital archives in humanities disciplines, for cataloguing and analyzing artworks in museum databases or academic studies, and supports historians in locating and studying primary sources.

Structural metadata indicates how composite objects are assembled.

For example, the structural metadata of a digitised medieval manuscript in an online archive defines the hierarchy and organization of the manuscript:

  • Page order (e.g., folio 1 recto, folio 1 verso)
  • Relationships between sections (e.g., chapters, marginalia, glosses)
  • Links between text and corresponding images, such as illuminations or annotations

Administrative metadata provides information to help manage a resource, such as when and how it was created, file type and other technical information, and who can access it. There are several subsets of administrative data, including:

− Rights management metadata, which deals with intellectual property rights − Preservation metadata, which contains information needed to archive and preserve a resource

Administrative metadata is essential for managing the life cycle of resources. For example, rights management metadata informs whether a researcher can legally reproduce an image in a publication, while preservation metadata supports digital preservation practices to protect fragile manuscripts.

Challenge 1:

Go back again to the online resources we reviewed. Find the data to which the metadata relates. Are you able to identify what type of metadata this is?

The objects searchable in the Met Museum’s online collection primarily feature descriptive metadata, such as title, author, date, and size. Administrative metadata is largely limited to the inventory number, though additional administrative (meta)data, potentially sensitive in nature, may remain unpublished. Structural metadata is generally scarce, despite the suitability of many well-documented art and cultural objects for such detailed representation. However, creating structural metadata would require extensive indexing, which is often impractical. Institutions typically prioritise basic cataloguing with minimal metadata, while in-depth cataloguing is frequently undertaken as part of specific projects.

Challenge 2:

Is the book “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” data or metadata?

It depends on the context whether it is considered data (the book itself) or metadata (title in a library catalogue).

The distinction between data and metadata often depends on the context in which the information is used. Data and metadata are relative concepts, and what serves as “data” in one scenario may function as “metadata” in another.

For example, the text of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” — its words, chapters, and narrative — is typically considered data when analysing its content, themes, or linguistic features. However, the title “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”” is metadata within the context of the book’s cataloguing. In a library catalogue, the title is part of a structured system of metadata used to describe, organise, and enable the discovery of the book (along with other metadata fields like author, publication date, and ISBN).

This relativity highlights the importance of understanding the different levels at which we interact with information. In essence:

  • Data refers to the primary subject of study or use (e.g., the full text of the book).
  • Metadata refers to information about that data, designed to describe, contextualise, or facilitate its organisation and retrieval (e.g., the title, author, or genre classification).

This interplay between data and metadata underscores the layered nature of information management and the need for precision when working with both.

Key Points

  • Descriptive metadata describes a resource for purposes.
  • Structural metadata indicates how composite objects are assembled.
  • Administrative metadata provides information to help manage a resource.