Meta what? What data? What what?

(Cohen, 1999)

Preservation of information overlaps many different other related aspects of information management, so I won't dwell overly long on the concept of metadata, but I do think that it is important enough in the concept of preservation to get a brief mention. In the context of information preservation, metadata is data about data (metadata, 2008). That is to say that it is information that is used to describe relevant information pertaining to the information it is ascribed to.

For example, if we were to preserve a photograph of a man in front of a bridge, the metadata would contain information about when the photograph was taken, who the man was, which bridge is in the photograph, who the photographer was, and any other relevant information that was known about that photograph. This information is then used in the preservation of the original piece of information (the photograph) in order to provide contextual information related to the photograph that researchers might use.


What value does this information actually have though?

Consider that without the context of any given piece of information there is little value to that information. Take the above example - a photograph of a man and a bridge. If we know nothing other than that we are preserving a photography of a man in front of a bridge we have few was to relate this to other information that we have preserved, and so it cannot be reliably used for reference because we know so little about it. But, since we preserved the contextual information along with the object itself, we have the ability to relate it to other information we have preserved. We know when it was taken, where it was taken, and by who this single piece of information can be referenced by date, location, photographer, the bridge, the type of media used to make the photograph, and even the style of photography - all of these smaller pieces of information can be used to better preserve the original by providing us 'handles' for drawing connections between it and other preserved information (Frendo, 2007).

Preserving information requires an understanding of the context of the information being preserved if it is to be useful to anyone in the future.


works cited:

Cohen, D. X. (Producer). (1999). Futurama. [Television series]. U.S.A.:Fox.

Frendo, R. (2007). Disembodied information: metadata, file plans, and the intellectual organisation of records. Records Management Journal, 17(3), 157-.

metadata. (2008). In Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Retrieved May 20, 2008, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/metadata