Metadata Primer for Technical CommunicatorsPresenter: Rob HannaInformation Architect, Innovatia Inc

About your presenter• Rob Hanna

▫15 years experience as a technical communicator▫10 years in content management▫STC Associate Fellow▫Vice-Chair of the STC Certification Commission

• Innovatia, Inc▫Headquartered in Saint John, New Brunswick▫400+ employees in Canada, U.S., Europe, and India▫Lines of business include Technical Publications,

Technical Support, and e-Learning▫$7 Million Research and Development Fund

Agenda

•What is Metadata?•Managing Metadata•Advanced Topics in Metadata•Tools for Metadata Management•Questions

What is Metadata?

Metadata Defined•Coined in the 1960’s by Jack Myers•Data about Data•Stuff about Stuff•Essential properties stored within the

content or external to the content that identify and define context, history, and management of the content

Application of Metadata•Metadata is

▫applied to all structured and unstructured content in a corpus

▫visible to the user or it can be hidden from view

▫both machine-driven and manually entered▫internal or external to the content▫mandatory, optional, or conditional

Value of Metadata•Findability•Automation•Access•Administration•Disposition•Disambiguation

Understanding Metadata• Administrative Metadata

▫ Metadata used for handling of content includes author, date, status, location, access

• Classification Metadata▫ Metadata used to index

content across a corpus includes subject, keywords, index terms

• Processing Metadata▫ Metadata used by

machines to process and display content includes font display, multimedia, and PIs

• Relational Metadata▫ Metadata used to relate

pieces of content includes links, related topics, maps

• Descriptive Metadata▫ Metadata used for search

and retrieval of content includes title, short description, document ID

• Structural Metadata▫ Metadata used to ensure

consistency and order of semantic meaning includes markup tags for XML, HTML

Managing Metadata

Finding Metadata •Metadata is everywhere – you just need to

know where to look for it▫Microsoft Office Files▫PDFs▫XML/HTML▫Images▫Databases▫Card catalogs▫On every page

Establishing a Single Source of Truth for Metadata•As with content, metadata must be

managed from a single source of truth•As far as possible, metadata should stay

within the source•Do not introduce opportunities for

ambiguity•Develop a Metadata Strategy

Creating Metadata

•Minimize the human interaction with the creation of metadata

•Where metadata is entered by a user, do not use “optional” metadata – use “mandatory”

•Embed metadata directly in the content•Rely on machine-generated metadata

where possible•Edit/audit manual metadata regularly

Correcting Metadata Sources

•Extract Metadata•Normalize Metadata•Replace Metadata

Advanced topics in Metadata

Metadata Standards

•Dublin Core•XMP

▫eXtensible Metadata Platform•XIF

▫eXcellent Image Format•RDF

▫Resource Definition Framework

Taxonomies and Ontologies•Taxonomies organize similar types of

information into an order and hierarchy for classification

•Ontologies organize disparate taxonomies as facets on content, creating a multi-dimensional model for classification

Tools for Metadata Management

Tools Presentation •Freeware/Shareware XIF tools•Acrobat XMP•Microsoft Excel

▫Lorem Ipsum DITA Generator▫DITA Metadata Extractor▫Basic Excel functions

QuestionsThank you for attending

Rob Hannarob.hanna@innovatia.net@singlesourcerorhttp://innovatia.net/blogs/single_sourceror