You do know what metadata is

“46% of respondents in leadership roles admit that they lack comprehensive knowledge of what metadata is or why it is important to business document management and creation” I read.¹

46% is a big number. It’s getting on for half!

But, people, you do know what metadata is and you do know why it matters as well.

If you’ve ever shopped online, say for a garment or anything else for that matter, then you’ve likely dealt with metadata. Maybe you just search for what you want and go straight there, select and purchase. But it’s more likely that you select a size, a colour, and so on and right there you’re using metadata to broaden and narrow the range of items on show to find a product that you like.

The metadata are properties or attributes that describe the thing. Real world things like clothes can be described with a range of well-known conventional terms: gender, garment type, colour, size, material, price, availability in store or online and so on. And that’s the importance of metadata – because without it you’re just browsing everything in no particular order hoping to find what you want. And even if you do find the genus, the type of thing you want, say, a pair of red chinos, you still probably have to specify the differentia, for example the different sizes, in order to get the right product.

You might prefer to just use search or perhaps you browse using the structured categories provided, but these too are built on the same descriptors, the same metadata, even if you don’t feel that you’re directly manipulating them yourself. And that’s the bigger story of metadata – it describes a domain – it’s a vital aspect of our knowledge.

It’s the same in the world of information and digital content. Unless you’re prepared to read everything until you find what you’re interested in then you’re going to rely on search or metadata (and search uses metadata as well). It’s going to matter that things are labelled and tagged correctly. And also the ability to do that is evidence that we do have some understanding of the subject domain as well.

¹ Content is everything, 2022, Templafy: https://www.templafy.com/guide/the-2022-content-is-everything-report/