Metadata
Metadata is any data that lays out information about facets of the data. This metadata is used to abridge cardinal details on a particular data, making tracking the data much more manageable. There are three major types of metadata; one, descriptive metadata, two, structural metadata, and three administrative metadata.
Descriptive metadata deals with the description of the intellectual content of a given digital object. The most crucial component of the descriptive metadata is the resource identifier, which identifies the item uniquely. Investigators use the descriptive metadata to identify and find resources by a relevant criterion. The dependability of the descriptive metadata is also because of its other elements: the author, the title, the subject, the date of publication, and the publisher’s description. These elements further provide the investigators with guidelines for the discovery and location of digital resources.
Structural metadata is the metadata that describes other characteristics of digital materials, that is, the relationships, the types, the versions, and their different attributes. The structural metadata includes the field for description, the meta-object’s handle, the data size and type, the owner, date deposited, and the date of the last version. Structural metadata is the information that connects the images to create one logical unit, such as an article. This character of the structural metadata helps make the investigators work more straightforward in terms of data collection since it organizes and keeps it ready for review.
Administrative metadata is the technical information: the file type, permission, and when or how the file was created, which helps manage a resource. The administrative metadata comprises of the technical and preservation metadata, which are widely used for internal management of the digital resources. The administrative metadata includes information about rights and reproduction, selecting criteria, archiving policy for digital content, or information about the scanning of source materials. These elements of the administrative metadata help administer information resources to investigators and help them distinguish different resources.
As seen above, metadata details the type and the level of use of information resources. To ease the work of investigators, metadata is divided into three major types, each of which deals with a section of the digital resource, and chips in identifying information location, identification of resources, and bringing similar resources together.
References
Abhyanker, R. V. (2016). U.S. Patent No. 9,459,622. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Higgins, C. W., Davis, M. E., Martinez, R., O’sullivan, J. J., Athsani, A., Kalaboukis, C., & Paretti, C. T. (2019). U.S. Patent No. 10,230,803. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Naaman, M., Ahern, S., King, S. P., & Nair, R. (2019). U.S. Patent No. 10,318,110. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Zuckerberg, M., Bosworth, A., Cox, C., Sanghvi, R., & Cahill, M. (2012). U.S. Patent No. 8,171,128. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.