What is Metadata Management? Metadata management is the administration of metadata (data that describes other data) across your organization. The management of metadata involves establishing processes and policies to ensure that information can be best accessed, integrated, shared, maintained, and analyzed across an organization.
Metadata is data that describes or provides information about the data contained in a digital asset such as a web page, a document, or a file. Metadata may contain information such as the title, author, creation date, or size of a file. Metadata can provide digital identification and help to organize electronic resources as well as to archive and preserve resources. It can also help users to discover resources and to find relevant information. Metadata allows users to identify resources and find them according to relevant criteria.
The four main uses for metadata are:
• identification of content
• management of content
• retrieval of content
• tracking of content usage
Metadata needs to be managed so that your organization’s digital assets can be easily navigated and doesn’t get lost in a sea of disorganized folders. When your metadata is organized, you will know that you are working with the most recent version of the digital asset and you will be able to prevent unauthorized users from accessing it. As the volume and diversity of data in your organization grows, metadata management becomes ever more critical to ensuring that business value is derived from the enormous amounts of data that belong to your organization.
There are three main types of metadata:
a. Technical metadata, which is used for decoding and rendering files
b. Preservation metadata, which is used for long-term management and for the archiving of the digital asset
c. Rights metadata, which pertains to intellectual property and usage rights
3. Descriptive Metadata refers to any information that can be used for identification and discovery of the asset in the future. These may include the author, title, and any relevant keywords, as well as physical attributes, such as file dimensions, and any unique identifiers.
The benefits of metadata management include:
• Consistency of definitions so that variations in terminology do not cause data retrieval problems.
• Clarity of relationships
• Clarity of data lineage, such as exact timestamps or what authorization was used to perform a particular action.
• Minimization of redundancy of effort.
• Maintenance of cross-organizational information without dependence on the knowledge of any one particular employee.
• Greater efficiency due to the ability of consistent data to be reused appropriately. This leads to faster delivery.
Metadata provides information about data. It answers the questions Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How. In contrast, master data refers to key business information that supports transactions. It may describe the customers, products, employees, suppliers, materials, etc. involved in transactions. Master data is commonly referred to as Parties (people, suppliers, customers, employees, etc.), Places (geography, sites, locations, etc.), and Things (material, items, etc.). Master data denotes a bigger set of values than does metadata. Master data is less about the essential qualities of the data than it is about the context in which the organization relates to the data.
Elements of metadata may include:
• Title/name of resource
• Description of resource
• Format of file or physical medium
• Description of the metadata and metadata standards, including version of the schema and where the schema can be found
• Unique identifiers assigned to the resource
• Rights holders of the data
• Information about rights over the resource
• Identity and contact information of those associated with the data
Metadata can be divided into six categories:
1. Descriptive metadata is an identification of specific data, such as titles, authors, dates and keywords. It is the most commonly used kinds of metadata.
2. Structural metadata indicates organizational structure. It might include page numbers, chapters, tables of contents, and indexes. It also indicates the relationship between sets of data.
3. Preservation metadata is information that supports the process of digital preservation. It may include elements of administrative metadata, technical metadata (a subset of administrative metadata documenting detailed formatting of files), and structural metadata.
4. Provenance metadata provides data about the history of a digital asset. It might include a list of which users impacted the digital object and what they did to it.
5. Use metadata is sorted each time a user accesses or uses a specific digital asset, in order to make predictions about the user’s future behavior.
6. Administrative metadata is information that helps manage a resource, such as the type of resource, permissions, or when and how it was created.
