Metadata

Metadata is data about data. A good example is a library card, which contains data about the nature and location of the data in the book referred to by the card.

Metadata has become important on the web because of the need to find useful information from the mass of information available. Manually-created metadata adds value because it ensures consistency. If one webpage about a topic contains a word or phrase, then all webpages about that topic should contain that same word. It also ensures variety, so that if one topic has two names, each of these names will be used. For example, an article about sports utility vehicles would also be given the metadata keywords '4 wheel drives', '4WDs' and four wheel drives', as this is what they are known as in Australia.

See also XML, RDF, Dublin Core

External links:

[Musicbrainz Metadata Initiative]

See also meta tags