METADATA

INTRODUCTION
        METADATA is any information that describes digital content. It can be describe the attribute and characteristic of digital content in structured and standardized way or in less standard way through the use of general description and tagging.
       Although make it digital focuses on the use of metadata for digital content, metadata is also used to describe physical object such as book, magazines and entities like people organizations, geographic places, events, museum object, corporate records.
      The term ‘META’ is derived from the GREEK word. META ‘means more fundamental kind’ or ‘some thing higher’.
      Metadata can usefully describe any kind of digital content such as an image, video file or text. It can also describe all sorts of things about the digital content, for instance the person or organization that created the content, the date it was created, its length, and technical details such as who entered the metadata.
     The term METADATA refers to any data that aids in identification, description, and location of worked electronic resources.

                    “METADATA’ is the catalogue of the digital library”.

     It is the data which providing information about one or more other piece of data such as:

• Means of creation.
• Purpose of data.
• Time and date of creation.
• Creator and author of data.
• Location of data.

     It is commonly refers to any data that aids in

• Identification.
• Description.
• Location.

E.g.:-A digital image may include metadata that describe how large the picture is, the color depth, the image resolution is, when the image was created, and other data.

CONTENT
It consists of number of predefined elements.
Each element can have one or more values.

E.g.:-
ELEMENT           VALUE
Title                   Web catalog
Creator               MCAuliffe
Publisher         U-sity of Queensland
Format                Text/html
Relation           Library website

DEFENITION
Metadata is simply defined as “data about data” or “information about information”.

“Structured information that describe, explain, locates or other wise make it easier to retrieve, use or manage an information resource.”(NISO, 2004).

FUNCTIONS

•        The primary function of metadata is resource discovery: metadata increases the odds that a user will able to retrieve appropriate information and access its usefulness and availability.
•       Another important function provided by metadata is control of electronic resources, whether through metadata for validating information and tracking use; right and permission metadata for controlling access; or content rating metadata, a key component of some webfiltering application.
• Metadata is data. As such, metadata can be stored and managed in a database, often called a registry or repository. However, it is impossible to identify metadata just by looking at it. We don’t know when data is metadata or just data.

NEED

• Resource identification and location.
• Resource documentation.
• Resource selection, evaluation and assessment.
• Improving the quality and quantity of results.

Application

• In libraries.
• In photographs.
• In videos.
• In audios.
• In web pages.
• In museums. Etc…

• Libraries: - Metadata is used in digital libraries. This may be a catalog record of digital document presently in term refers to any data used to aid and location of the information.

• Photographs: - Metadata may be written in to digital photo file that will who owns it, copyright and contact information, what camera created the file, along with exposure information and descriptive information such as keyword about the photo, making the file searchable on the computer and / or the internet. Some metadata may be written by the camera and some in put by the photographer and / or software after downloading the computer.

• Video: - metadata is particularly useful in video, where information about contents is not directly understandable by the computer, but where efficient search is desirable.

• WebPages: -WebPages often include metadata in the form of metatags. Description and keyword metatags are commonly used to describe the webpage’s content. Most search engineers use this data when adding pages to their search index. Etc…

TYPES
Mainly two type of metadata, they are;

1. DESCRIPTIVE METADATA: - which describe the digital content i.e., which include the creator of the resource, its title, subject heading and the other (describe the attribute and characteristics of digital content) that elements that will be used to search for and locate the item.

E.g.:- an abstract element may summarize what the digital document is all about.
    2.   ADMINISTRATIVE METADATA: - Administrative metadata is designed primarily to manage the digital content. Those manage the content over time need to be able to under take activities such as:

• Archive digital content.

• Track digital content and its representation.

• Ensure file format can be read and transformed.

• Ensure authenticity and integrity of digital content over time.

• Identify for the source the metadata and up dates.

E g; - Preservation metadata: It is the example of a metadata scheme for administration. This scheme can be used for long term management of any type of digital content. It is used in digital repositories.

METADATA SCHEME
        METADATA is most often prepackaged and ready to use by professional subject committees and sectors in what is known as a metadata scheme.
       A metadata scheme provides a standard and consistent way to create, manage and share metadata. A scheme generally made up of;
      A set of specification, which can contain information about the purpose for which the schemes is intended.
      It maintenance agency.
     The name of metadata elements with their meaning and ways the elements can be used
      Recommended values for the element themselves, such as thesauri use and encoding schemes.
      An abstract or entity-relationship model illustrating a high level purpose or view of the scheme.

E g: - Dublin core metadata initiative element, VRA core 4.0 (by Visual Resource Association’s Data standard committee, it is indented for image management), ONIX etc…

CONCLUSION
       Metadata is data associated with object which reveals their potential users of having full advance knowledge of their existence or characteristics. In the digital era digital library has a good role. So metadata is inevitable. Metadata is also used to describe physical object such as books, magazines and entities like people organizations, geographic places, events, museums objects etc...