Card catalogs have long been the map for finding materials in libraries. They were the original form of metadata. This interesting topic came to us from DATAVERSITY in their article, “Disrupting Metadata Management with Metadata Automation.”
Metadata is “data about data”, in context. It supplies the “what, where, when, why, and how” of data. Metadata is part of a digital cataloging system that summarizes the most basic information about the data, making finding and tracking it easier.
Metadata is necessary for web pages, and contains descriptions of the page content, as well as keywords linked to its content. Data sources of all types, whether structured, unstructured, or semi-structured, contain metadata information. It is a primary facet of effective data management regardless of the size of the organization. Strong metadata management is necessary for data governance, data stewardship, data warehousing, master data management, business intelligence and analytics.
Metadata management can be used to improve quality and minimize duplication at source systems to help an organization streamline the discovery and documentation of data related to the data in other systems.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.
