Introduction to

Metadata
 What is metadata?
Metadata is… data about data!

(from the Greek preposition μετά meaning "after” or "with”)

Basically, metadata is any kind of information that describes something else.

In the context of today’s workshop, Metadata is descriptive

information about digital resources:
• individual files
• collections of files (or: relationships among files)
• complete projects (or: relationships among files and
collections)
 What is metadata?
In the context of today’s workshop, Metadata is descriptive
information about digital resources:
• individual files
• collections of files
• complete projects

Metadata may describe (e.g.) We’ll come back to this!

• the content of a photograph
• the photograph itself
• the digital version of that same photograph
• the relationship between that photograph and other
photographs or texts, etc.
 Why metadata?

“Hardware
“Hardwareandandsoftware
softwarecome andand
come go—sometimes
go—sometimes
becoming obsolete
becoming obsoletewith
withalarming rapidity—but
alarming rapidity—buthigh-quality,
high-
standards-based,
quality, system-independent
standards-based, metadata can be used,
system-independent
reused, migrated,
metadata can beand disseminated
used, in any number
reused, migrated, and of ways,
even in ways that
disseminated in we
anycannot
number anticipate
of ways, at even
this moment.
in ways
that we cannot anticipate at this moment.
Digitization does not equal access. The mere act of creating
digital copies of collection materials does not make those
materials findable, understandable, or utilizable to our ever-
expanding audience of online users. But digitization
combined with the creation of carefully crafted metadata can
significantly enhance end-user access; and our users are the
primary reason that we create digital resources.”
From the “Introduction” to Introduction to Metadata, Online Edition, Version 3.0
<http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/standards/intrometadata>
Different ways of thinking
about metadata
 Authoritative vs. user-created
 Different types of metadata to describe various aspects
of the same thing
 Ontologies, taxonomies, vocabularies
 Metadata standards and formats

More about DHO recommendations this afternoon!

Authoritative metadata

 AKA ‘top-down’
 Created by project team
 Formalized; focus on control
 Specialists in (at least one aspect of) the field
 Focus and coverage will depend on the requirements of
the project and repository
User-created metadata

 AKA ‘bottom-up’
 Social tagging
 May be open or within a community
 Less focused; what the “tagging public” sees
 Generally less structured, not prescriptive

7 April 2009: Introduction to Semantic Web

 Types of metadata
 Descriptive: Facilitates discovery and describes
intellectual content
 Administrative: Facilitates management of
digital and analog resources
 Technical: Describes the technical aspects of
the digital object
 Structural: Describes the relationships within a
digital object
 Preservation: Supports long-term retention of
the digital object and may overlap with
technical, administrative, and structural
metadata
From Best Practice Guidelines for Digital Collections at University of Maryland Libraries, edited by
Susan Schreibman <http://www.lib.umd.edu/dcr/publications/best_practice.pdf>
 Types of metadata
 Descriptive: Facilitates discovery and describes
intellectual content
 Administrative: Facilitates management of
digital and analog resources
 Technical: Describes the technical aspects of
the digital object
 Structural: Describes the relationships within a
digital object
 Preservation: Supports long-term retention of
the digital object and may overlap with
technical, administrative, and structural
metadata
From Best Practice Guidelines for Digital Collections at University of Maryland Libraries, edited by
Susan Schreibman <http://www.lib.umd.edu/dcr/publications/best_practice.pdf>
Descriptive metadata

It is always necessary to differentiate between the description of…

 Content
 Source (if there is one!)
 Digital file/object

For born-digital
objects, the digital
object is the source
Content:
• a painting
• a sculpture
• a text
• a building

Source:
microfilm of a manuscript that is
• paper photograph of a painting or a building
itself scanned… both manuscript
• sketch of a sculpture
and microfilm are “source”
• a manuscript, containing a text

Digital file/object:
• scan or digital photo of a paper photograph
• scan or digital photo of a sketch of a sculpture
• scan or digital photo of a manuscript
• born-digital photo of a building

No “source” – digital image is taken directly

Administrative metadata

 Facilitates management of files

 Describes the creation/derivation of files
 Responsible Individuals and institutions
 Dates
 Locations
 Technical specifications (e.g., file size, file format)
Structural metadata

 Describes/defines relationships between and among

files
 AKA describing collections
Relationships are
 AKA describing projects usually, but need
not be, 1:1

Identifying what collection or project a file belongs to

Identifying what files belong to which collection or project

Identifying what project a collection belongs to

Ontologies, taxonomies,
controlled vocabularies
 Controlled vocabulary: a list of terms
 Taxonomy: a collection of controlled vocabulary terms
organized into a hierarchical structure
 Ontology: a formal representation of a set of concepts
within a domain, and the relationships between these
concepts
Ontologies, taxonomies,
controlled vocabularies
 Concepts separate from format
 Created by scholarly communities, learned bodies,
projects, etc.
 Whenever possible, use what is available
 Internet Assigned
Numbers Authority
Language Subtag
Controlled vocabulary Registry
(http://www.iana.org/
assignments/language
 Controlled list of explicitly enumerated
-subtag-registry)

terms
 Unambiguous definitions for each term
1. If the same term is commonly used to
mean different concepts in different
contexts, then its name is explicitly
qualified to resolve this ambiguity.
2. If multiple terms are used to mean the
same thing, one of the terms is
identified as the preferred term in the
controlled vocabulary and the other
terms are listed as synonyms or aliases.
Taxonomy

 Controlled vocabulary, hierarchical structure

 Terms in parent-child relationships with one another
 CIDOC Conceptual
Ontology Reference Model
(http://cidoc.ics.forth.g
r/)

 Represents the concepts that make up a domain

 Controlled vocabulary
 Hierarchical

Similar to a taxonomy (terms are sometimes interchanged), the difference is philosophical

An Ontology is developed to reason about a domain, and may be

used to define a domain
Metadata standards and
formats
The first questions of metadata:
 What do we want to describe?
 How to we want to describe it?

Using accepted standards, expressed in widely-used or easily mapped

formats, will ensure that our metadata is accessible.
Metadata standards

 Standards are widely-used (hence standard) prescriptive

recommendations guiding
 Defining fields: “name” “title” “identifier” “subject”
“physicalDescription” “location”
 Structure and hierarchy within the metadata itself
 Controlled vocabularies
Metadata formats

 Extensible Markup Language (XML)

 Allows for combining and interoperability
 XML flexibility
 Any other conceivable format
 MS Word? PDF? Post-it notes?

 Excel, FileMaker Pro, Access DB, CSV

In some but not all cases, the
semantics of metadata is separate
from the format of metadata
Identifier: 0-89236-361-4
Creator: Howard Besser
Creator: Jennifer Trant
Title: Introduction to Imaging: Issues in Constructing an Image Database
Publisher: The Getty Art History Information Program
Date: 1995
Subject: Image processing—Digital techniques
Metadata mapping

 Movingmetadata from one

standard/format to another
standard/format
 Not always pretty…
Metadata mapping

 Moving metadata from one

standard/format to another
standard/format
 Not always pretty…

 Important: base the design of your

project metadata on an existing
standard, and plan it out ahead of
time!
 How much is enough?

Standards are great! ROBUST

Just because it’s there doesn’t mean you have to use it!

YOUR NEEDS ARE NOT NECESSARILY EVERYONE ELSE’S – AND THAT IS OKAY!

Open Access (not magic, a bit scary, but very useful)