Metadata

Metadata (meta data, meta-data, or sometimes metainformation) is “data about data.” Metadata is an emerging practice with close ties to librarianship, information science, information technology and GIS. It can be applied to a vast array of objects including both physical and electronic items such as raw data, books, CDs, DVDs, images, maps, database tables, and web pages. Since the emergence of the Dublin Core metadata set and the internet, use of metadata has experienced a considerable growth in popularity as businesses and other organisations seek to organise rapidly growing volumes of data and information.