Definitions of “Metadata”: A Brief Survey of International Standards

Jonathan Furner

Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, 2020, vol. 71, issue 6, E33-E42

Abstract: A search on the term “metadata” in the International Organization for Standardization's Online Browsing Platform (ISO OBP) reveals that there are 96 separate ISO standards that provide definitions of the term. Between them, these standards supply 46 different definitions—a lack of standardization that we might not have expected, given the context. In fact, if we make creative use of Simpson's index of concentration (originally devised as a measure of ecological diversity) to measure the degree of standardization of definition in this case, we arrive at a value of 0.05, on a scale of zero to one. It is suggested, however, that the situation is not as problematic as it might seem: that low cross‐domain levels of standardization of definition should not be cause for concern.

Date: 2020
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