The first time I heard about metadata I was thinking of a term that’s not that common. But as I found out metadata is a very simple thing to learn if you just know how to put things together. So what is metadata? Metadata is the data about a data, so it’s basically information about the main information you are holding. For example you have the yellow pages in front of you, even the yellow pages have metadata! When you look for a place that you once ate and you forgot the place you look it up the yellow pages or the internet.

Let’s say you use the yellow pages to look for that restaurant that you once ate at. On the yellow pages you will see all the information that is needed. You will see the name of the restaurant, the location of the restaurant and even the phone number of the restaurant. Some may have online websites that they can redirect you to as well. All these information about one single thing is called metadata. With this data you can now easily go and eat at that place that you once ate. Metadata can come in many different forms but would still come out as one metadata. This means that every data that you know about a thing is called data.

For example you are talking about a person. You would get arrows and find all the things that make that person who he is. You would start off with his name which is John. The work he does which is a plumber, his height which is 6’5” and his hair colour which is dark brown. All those secondary information about the main information of John is called metadata. Now do you get what metadata is all about? It is just a string of information that’s needed in order for you to get all the things that you would need. In this case we are talking about the person’s information.

You can do this to everything that you can see now. For example your cup of coffee, you have a cup which has a brand, and inside your cup you have coffee in it, what kind of coffee? The answers would be called metadata. That’s the simplest way to put things out if you are talking about metadata. Still not having fun yet? You can get metadata from practically everything that you are starting at this moment. Even this article you can find metadata from. Who wrote this article, what date it was posted and what’s it all about. Metadata is important if you want something to have reference from or if you are looking for something metadata can be very useful in your daily lives.