This content originally appeared on my Scientific American blog, Information Culture , in 2012. While the page remains , images are no longer visible. At the request of several readers, I’m reposting the content here.
When I talk to most scientists and mention the word “metadata” they look at me as if I’ve grown a second head. Despite the fact that these folks regularly use and create metadata (not to be confused with megadata or “big data” which is a whole other subject), many have not heard of the term.
Broadly speaking, metadata is simply a structured description of something else. The most popular example of metadata comes from the library catalog. Each book has a title, author, call number, publisher, ISBN etc. listed in the online catalog. These elements comprise the book’s metadata, and there are rules to make sure that things are standardized.