Project Development – Metadata
Metadata can be defined simply as "data about data," or information associated with or about a particular object.
Examples of metadata include the author of a book, the title of a painting, or the format of a recording. Metadata
is created for and associated with a digital resource, such as a book or a collection of photographs, to support
its discovery, understanding, use, storage, and migration.
Metadata is most often divided into three conceptual types:
- Descriptive metadata
- Used for the indexing, discovery, and identification of a resource. Examples of descriptive metadata include title, author, publisher, and physical format. In most cases, content contributors or subject specialists working with the content contributor supply the descriptive metadata.
- Structural Metadata
- Information used to display and navigate through resources. This metadata includes information about the internal organization of the resource such as structural divisions of a resource (i.e., chapters in a book), and is used to replicate the original structure in the online environment.
- Administrative metadata
- Includes the information needed to access and display the resource, as well as rights management and long-term preservation and archiving information. Administrative metadata also includes the resolution an image was scanned at, the hardware and software used in producing an image, compression information, and pixel dimensions.
