Metadata

Metadata in Legal Information Retrieval

The following is a basic concept of Metadata in relation to information retrieval. In addition to this, Metadata may be applied to legal texts, including case law, legislation and scholarly works. Metadata is data about data, or more specifically within our context, data about messages, texts, and documents. The meta of metadata comes from the Greek for along with or over, so literally, metadata is along with data or over data. Some experts have suggested that the term metadata should be reserved for data about messages, texts and documents that are embedded within the documents themselves. (Other data about messages, texts, and documents could be called bibliographic records, or something similar.) Certainly the inclusion of metadata within the document itself is the expectation for metadata that describes a digital document. But any kind of document — digital, print on paper, or of any other medium — can certainly contain its bibliographic record within itself, as has long been the practice with CIP (Cataloging in Publication) in printed books. This distinction, between records separate from documents or included in documents, does not seem to be very useful. Thus, metadata may not be very different in meaning or purpose from surrogates or records.

Hierarchical Display of Metadata

Education And Communications > Documentation > Documentation

Metadata

Concept of Metadata

See the dictionary definition of Metadata.

Characteristics of Metadata

[rtbs name=”xxx-xxx”]

Resources

Translation of Metadata

• Spanish: Metadatos
• French: Metadonnée
• German: Metadaten
• Italian: Metadati
• Portuguese: Metadados
• Polish: Metadane

Thesaurus of Metadata

Education And Communications > Documentation > Documentation > Metadata

See also

• Semantic web

• Meta-information
• Data about data
• Metadata registry
• Metadata repository
• Metainformation