What is Metadata, Anyway?
“Metadata” is the information, or data, that accompanies a piece of content (digitized or analog), such as a video or audio clip, graphic, image, interactive learning object, script, etc. Examples of metadata include description, subject heading, file format, author/producer, rights holder, etc. When these fields of information use standardized vocabularies and have defined relationships, this constitutes a metadata model or dictionary. With a dictionary in hand, content can be more easily indexed, catalogued, searched and retrieved.
