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What the Heck Is Metadata?

Posted: December 13, 2012 | Author: Tamara Bredemus | Filed under: Metadata, What is... | Tags: Metadata | 9 Comments

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:

Column Name

Choices

Column Notes

Animal

Cat
Dog
Horse
Lizard
Marsupial
Rat

 

Color

Black

White

Orange

Green

Brown

Use check boxes to allow multiple selections

Location

Indoors
Outdoors

 

Season

Winter
Spring
Summer
Autumn

 

 

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.


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