I want to search for articles about how to define metadata. Not what the definitions of the word metadata is but the kind of things to consider when defining metadata.

Pretty much every copmbination of words I have come up with gives me millions of matches but they are all basically telling me “Metadata is information about data”

I know that, what I want is some examples of the metadata that has been gathered for IT systems and document management systems and mostly I want to see examples of how people decided what metadata needed defining.

All help welcome. Jokes and criticism also expected.

“metadata examples -definition” ??

Sounds to me like you’re approaching it from the wrong end. You’re saying “oooh, metadata is a buzzword, we need to have that”, then usually it’s “we need to track this stuff, this is how we’ll do it”

metadata in IT topics – embedding GPS position into image; Embedding author/time/date information in a word document…

We have a search system here at work, which scours the meta-data of documents – author, time, date, last user, creation date, etc.

All that info is *just* as important as the contents of the document itself.

What I need is a few real world examples of how other organisations have approached metadata management. How they decided what metadata thety wanted and what process they used to decide that.

It is reasonable obvious for most of what is needed – author, version, published date etc but this is based on experience.

What is wanted is some kind of process or methodology that doesn’t rely on my experience. Unfortunately saying Ít is bloody obvious, just think about it’ isn’t an acceptable approach hence the Googling.

Look up Dublin Core. Or I will.

EDIT: I did.
dublincore.org will give you all the info you need

Yeah, seen Dublin but it is a bit to theoretical. These guys want something on a PPT slide

I just shoved in “business metadata” and loads of stuff popped up

no idea if it’s useful though

so did I. It’s not

It depends on what it is.

Metadata isn’t an end in itself, it’s jut something that comes out of your analysis. And should be avoided if it’s not necessary. You will only know what metadata needs defining when you come across it in your normal analysis. If you don’t, then good.

Unless people are unsure as to what metadata really means…

If you’re trying to explain it to people, there are some examples here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223396

more search results:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Search/en-GB?query=metadata&ac=8

MS Sharepoint 2010 has a managed metadata feature, so maybe check that on MS’s site.

Companies’ strategies, policies and procedures are often more accessible than they should be.

Try “metadata strategy”

How about a book?

Not sure if this link will work:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=metadata&x=0&y=0

You could check out the java api for content repository management, JSR170 (some info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_repository_API_for_Java ), I’m guessing the considerations that went into its design are probably a reasonable starting point for document metadata.

Cheers. I have enough now for my presentation.

STW Consultancy rocks!

Do send us all a copy.
Email address in profile.
(I may need to make a ppt as well, soon)

Ta