[sometimes with pl. v.] data that describes or underlies other data
noun
The definition of metadata is information about other information.
An example of metadata is a card catalog in a library, giving information about books.
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metadata
Webster's New World College Dictionary, Fifth Edition Copyright © 2014 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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metadata
plural noun
used with a sing. or pl. verbData that describes other data, as in describing the origin, structure, or characteristics of computer files, webpages, databases, or other digital resources.
THE AMERICAN HERITAGE® DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, FIFTH EDITION by the Editors of the American Heritage Dictionaries. Copyright © 2016, 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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Noun
(uncountable)
- Data that describes other data, serving as an informative label.
- Most websites contain metadata to tell the computer how to lay the words out on the screen.
Origin
meta- +"Ž data
English Wiktionary. Available under CC-BY-SA license.
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metadata - Computer Definition
From the Greek meta, meaning beside or after, and the Latin datum, meaning what is given. Data about data, that is, data that describes other data. For example, the title, subject, publisher, and author comprise metadata about its contents.
Webster's New World Telecom Dictionary Copyright © 2010 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana.
Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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(1) (The Metadata Company, LLC, Long Beach, CA, www.metadata.com). Formerly Metadata Information Partners, Metadata is a software firm offering a variety of data management products and services. In 1986, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted the company incontestable status for the Metadata trademark. Whenever the term is used generically in this encyclopedia (definition #2 below), it is spelled with a dash (meta-data).
(2) (meta-data) Data that describes other data. For example, data dictionaries and repositories provide information about the data elements in a database (see data dictionary). Digital cameras store meta-data in the image files that include the date the photo was taken along with camera settings (see EXIF). Digital music files contain meta-data such as song title and artist name (see ID3 tag). Meta-data are stored in an HTML page (Web page) to help search engines define the page properly, and most especially, make it rank higher in the results list (see meta tag). Meta-data has existed for centuries. Card catalogs and handwritten indexes are examples long before the electronic age. See Meta Data Coalition. The Most Glaring Lack of Meta-Data The music CD should have been designed with meta-data, such as album name, artist and song titles. With 650 million bytes of storage, a few thousand could have easily been reserved for future use. In the early 1980s, readouts to display this information were expensive, and the future was not considered. The result was a circuitous route of searching by track length for the missing data on the Internet when a CD was played on the computer (see CDDB), as well as conflicts in older stand-alone CD players when meta-data was finally added to the format. Meta-Data in the Snowden Debacle After former CIA employee Edward Snowden leaked top-secret American surveillance programs to the press in May 2013, meta-data came front and center. It was revealed that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) had undertaken massive phone surveillance, and the controversy was about what was recorded: the actual voice conversations or only the meta-data (times and telephone numbers of the calls). Even when voice content is not recorded, the meta-data can be analyzed to determine who might be in contact with suspected terrorists.
Meta-Data in an Image File
A huge amount of meta-data can be stored in an image file. The IPTC Core section (expanded below) is a meta-data standard from the International Press Telecommunications Council for adding creation data.
A Ton More
An image file can be edited to include a huge amount of meta-data to describe the file. DICOM stands for Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine.
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