Should we capture metadata about metadata?

In a world where library metadata is harvested, mashed up, aggregated, and contributed by users, do we need to pay more attention to meta-metadata? Good question. Of course, we do some of this already, but most meta-metadata is considered to be administrative or technical information that's not exposed to our users. That could change in the future.

All this is worth thinking about and is addressed by Fran who writes at VocabControl in a recent post, The power of parametadata.

Parametadata (or meta-metadata) is another subset of metadata – it is the metadata about the metadata, giving its provenance, date of creation, technical specifications, etc. Once you start to think about metadata as content in its own right, it becomes obvious that just as you wish to track the author, title, and so on of the core content, so too you need to track the author(s), provenance, date of creation and latest update of the metadata as well. For subjective metadata, parametadata becomes hugely useful. Because you can have multiple classifications of an asset, it is very important to track the source – distinguishing between author added keywords, indexer keywords, and folksonomic tags, for example – so that people can tell where a tag has come from.

h/t LISNews

Comments

[carol seiler]

Thanks! I had not heard the term "parametadata" but it makes sense, perfect sense!

[Christine Schwartz]

Thanks for the comment, Carol. BTW, I've been enjoying reading your blog.

[carol seiler]

Ta much - you made me think and so I posted about it on my blog - giving you credit for bringing it up in the first place (credit or blame, depending on point of view).
And I love reading your blog too :)

[Carl Taswell]

Just today came across your interesting blog post. I've been doing some work in this area and have introduced a few other terms and concepts regarding "metadata about metadata" in my recent paper that appeared in Future Internet which you can find at this link:

http://www.mdpi.com/1999-5903/2/2/156

Let me know what you think!

[Christine Schwartz]

Hi Carl,

Thanks for posting the link to your article. I will definitely give it a read and get back to you.