Metadata
Last updated
Last updated
Data that provides information about other data [].
Metadata is structured (and often standardised) information associated with a (data) resource, that provides information about the resource itself.
Metadata provides and (which may be general or domain-specific) for its resource.
Purpose
Metadata allows you to:
Make resources , by providing a high-level overview which can be inserted into a search index
Make resources , by providing information about how they were generated in the first place.
Thinking about types of metadata allows you to:
Decide who should be produce metadata and when that should happen
A 'type' of metadata is a broad-brush classification of what a metadata element is for and (correspondingly) who might create it and when. The project describes three different types of metadata, Administrative, Description and Structural. Wikipedia !
How To Fair's Structural metadata description incorporates two aspects, we've differentiated them into "provenance" and "form" to help highlight the different roles and times.
Administrative metadata is relevant for managing data, for example:
Project
Resource owner
Collaborators
Funder
Organisation
License
These can usually be assigned before you collect or create the data resource itself.
Purpose
The Dublin Core allows you to:
Quickly define a set of metadata to make a published data resource findable
We think the following syntaxes will be most useful for definition (but this is by no means an exhaustive list):
The used in defining the data and its structural metadata should provide meaning and context to the data in a formal and machine-readable way. However, where richer meaning or context is difficult or impossible to formally capture, this structural metadata should be used to convey such information.
Specified indirectly, by referencing an external or .
These details should (ideally) be established a priori to data generation (see "), but may evolve throughout the lifetime of a resource.
The is an organisation dedicated to metadata. They give a . If publishing a data resource on the web, these elements serve as a guide for metadata should be included in order to best facilitate information discovery.
See the for full descriptions.
Whilst metadata need not be limited to this (particularly in cases where rich can be used to query for datasets, as opposed to search based methods), adhering to the Dublin Core should ensure a good search ranking and help you conform to the .
As discussed in , a can be an important element of your metadata, for describing the content of the data resource.
This allows you to check that the provided metadata is correct. The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative for just this purpose.