What is metadata and why is it important?

Short Answer #

Metadata is information about language resources that helps communities organize, search, understand, and use content more effectively.

Expanded Answer #

Imagine a community has collected 5,000 recordings. Without organization, finding a specific recording could become extremely difficult. Metadata helps solve this problem. Metadata is simply information about information. Examples include:

• Speaker name
• Recording date
• Community
• Dialect
• Topic
• Story title
• Language level
• Geographic location
• Educational category

Metadata allows communities to search and organize content in meaningful ways. For example, a language worker may want to locate:

• Recordings by a specific Elder
• Stories about a particular topic
• Content from a certain dialect
• Beginner learning resources
• Materials collected during a specific project

Without metadata, these searches become difficult or impossible. With metadata, language resources become far more useful. Metadata also creates important opportunities for future technologies. Artificial intelligence, speech technologies, educational tools, and search systems all perform better when language resources are well organized. Good metadata transforms a collection of files into a usable knowledge system.