Why Is Metadata Important?
What is Metadata?
Metadata is a “data that contains information about other data”. To put it another way, it is “information about data”. It contains information needed to understand and effectively use the data. However, its significance becomes apparent as we consider its functional use.
For example, a digital web page might include metadata specifying what software language the page is written in, what tools were used to create it, what objects the page is about, etc.
The different types of metadata
For clarity purposes, different types of metadata are put in specific categories. The different types are the following:
Descriptive metadata: Data that describes information about a resource or a file. It used to help with discovery and identification. Descriptive metadata includes elements such as title, abstract, author, keywords.
Structural metadata: Data that informs about the structure of the data object. It enlightens users about how a resource / file organized. An example of structural metadata is a table of contents. Tables of contents indicate how pages from chapters, and how the chapters are related to each other.
Administrative metadata: Technical information that helps manage a resource. This can be the date on which the file created, file type, permissions, etc. Administrative metadata also related to usage rights and intellectual property, providing information such as the owner of a given asset, how it used, by whom, and for how long.
What is the Business Value of Metadata?
The primary value of Metadata comes with how it aligned to and supports specific marketing business goals and objectives. Here are a few of the ways that Metadata brings value to the marketing business:
Classification – Metadata plays a key role in classification, or organizing your content Retention – Metadata can be used to track things like the dates associated with a document’s associated record schedule.
Information Security – Metadata can used to flag a security setting, validating access and edit rights, and thus controlling distribution.
Customer Experience – Metadata can also used as a way to capture users’ rating of content, for example, indicating that content is “valuable or “useless” or even “dated.”
Information “Findability” – Metadata is extremely valuable as a search and retrieval enhancing mechanism by enabling users to target a query on a certain field, such as author, subject, date, etc.
Metadata Development Can Create Benefits:
It can extend data longevity
The life-span of a typical data set can be very short, often because missing or unavailable relevant metadata renders it useless. When comprehensive metadata developed and maintained, it counters typical data entropy and degradation.
It also facilitates data reuse and sharing
Metadata is key to ensuring that data which highly detail or complicate, more easily interpreted, analyzed and processed by the data’s originator and others.
Metadata is essential for maintaining historical records of long-term data sets. Making up for inconsistencies that can occur in documenting data, personnel and methods. Comprehensive metadata can also enable data sets designed for a single purpose to reuse for other purposes and over the longer term.
Developing and maintaining metadata can be an expensive proposition
There are costs associat with editing and publishing data and metadata. Their long-term stewardship and maintenance can also be burdensome. Yet, metadata is an investment that may not be optional in an era when information is critical to the life force of an organization.