What the Heck Is Metadata?

When people define metadata as “Data about data” I want to poke them in the eye. That definition doesn’t help anyone understand what metadata really is.

If you want to help your users understand what metadata is try this:

Show them a photo of my dog Stella…

Ask your users to describe the photo.

You’ll start hearing things like:

• Dog
• Black and White
• Little
• Cute
• Outside
• Autumn
• Boston Terrier

Your users just defined metadata for this picture.

So in a SharePoint Picture Library you could add the following columns:

So back to the original question, “What the heck is metadata?” Metadata is how you describe something.

Consider a contract. I might call it the Anderson Contract for a $350,000 house build. That’s 3 pieces of metadata right there; Anderson, $350,000, House Build.

Metadata is the description of an item.