metadata

(1) (meta-data) Data that describes other data. The term may refer to detailed compilations such as data dictionaries and repositories that provide a substantial amount of information about each data element. It may also refer to any descriptive item about data, such as a title field in a media file, a field of key words in a written article or the content in a meta tag in an HTML page.

Meta-data has existed for centuries. Card catalogs and handwritten indexes are examples long before the electronic age. See meta tag, data dictionary, repository and Meta Data Coalition.

(2) (The Metadata Company, Brentwood, TN, www.metadata.com). Formerly Metadata Information Partners, it is a software firm specializing in data management products as well as providing consulting and custom information systems to the health care and government industries. Although the term "metadata," spelled the same with lower case "m," is widely used to refer to data about data (see definition #1 above), the company trademarked the word in 1986 and was granted "incontestable" status in 1991.

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(product)

Metadata - (Note: One unhyphenated word with initial capital; contrast meta data) A word coined by Jack E. Myers to represent current and future lines of products implementing the concepts of his MetaModel, and also to designate his company The Metadata Company that would develop and market those products. A data and publication search performed when Myers coined the term, early in the summer of 1969, did not discover any use either of the word "metadata" or "meta data". Myers used the term in a 1973 product brochure and it is an Incontestable registered U.S. Trademark.