“Metadata is key to ensuring that resources will survive and continue to be accessible into the future” – NISO ∥2001∥. With this quote from NISO, the press who published the booklet “Understanding Metadata”, one can begin to understand the key concept about metadata. In different communities, metadata is referred to as machine readable information while others use it for records that describe electronic resources.

“Metadata is structured information that describes, explains, locates, or otherwise makes it easier to retrieve, use or manage an information resource.” – NISO ∥2001∥. It is called often, information about information or data about data. In libraries, it is commonly used for formal schemes of resource descriptions on any type of digital or non-digital object. The three main types of metadata are descriptive metadata, structural metadata and administrative metadata. Descriptive Metadata is a resource for purposes that include discovery and identification with elements such as title and abstract. Structural Metadata is an indication of how compound objects such as pages to form a book are put together. Lastly, Administrative Metadata provides information to help manage when a resource was created, file type and more. Here are two subsets under a administrative metadata: Rights management metadata that deals with intellectual property rights and Preservation metadata that contains information necessary to archive and preserve a resource.

Metadata can:

  • Describe resources at any level of aggregation

  • Describe collections, single, resources and components of a large resource.

  • Be embedded into a digital object or it can be stored separately. One of the languages it is frequently embedded in is HTML documents and the headers of image files.

    • All in all metadata facilitates the discovery of relevant information, organizes electronic resources, facilitates interoperability and legacy resource integration, provides digital identification and support archiving and preservation.

    In addition, the definition of electronic texts and text encoding must be examined. However, a brief peek should be given from Allen H Renear ∥2004∥ in Chapter 17 of the electronic book “A Companion to Digital Humanities” – “Before they can be studied with the aid of machines, texts must be encoded in a machine-readable form. Methods for this transcription are called, generically, “text encoding schemes”; such schemes must provide mechanisms for representing the characters of the text and its logical and physical structure … ancillary information achieved by analysis or interpretation [may be also added] …Michael Sperberg-McQueen, Text Encoding and Enrichment. In The Humanities Computing Yearbook 1989–90, ed. Ian Lancashire ∥Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991∥"

    “Text encoding holds a special place in humanities computing” – Allen H. Renear ∥2004∥. When the term markup is used it also means text encoding as they hold the same meaning. Markup is characterized as information formally distinct from the character sequence of a digital transcription of a text. This serves to identify logical or physical features or control processing. Markup originates from traditional publishing when editors would mark up a manuscript with symbols or annotations. In other words, text encoding is where unfamiliar expressions like punctuation are intermixed with the familiar flow of the natural language writing system. Now that text encoding is better understood, one can define electronic text. An electronic text is electronic transcription of a literary text in which characters, words and punctuation is represented in a computer file which allows keywords and contextual searching. Electronic texts provide greater ease of manipulation for searching, editing and has significant advantages for individuals with visual impairments.

    In conclusion, metadata, text encoding and electronic texts have all shaped the world of digital humanities as we know it and a lot more can be learnt from in depth study.