PHOTO:
pichitstocker
For professional content managers, metadata is a trusted playbook for all our information assets. Like the index cards at the library or parts catalogue at the hardware store, metadata assigns meaningful names to things we need to find. It turns a junk drawer into a well-ordered, clearly labelled sorter. Metadata tells us where information lives and moves, how important it is for the business and how to handle and safeguard it. But for many end users, metadata is poorly understood. Itâs often considered an annoyance to be avoided by any means possible, opting instead to rely entirely on search engines or the latest promise of auto-tagging.