[Clipart] metadata for cliparts

[Brian Bucknam]

On May 22, 2009, at 1:07 PM, chovynz wrote:
> I'd like to understand more about metadata. Some of you guys have  
> been talking about it as if it's the holy grail.
> For me, metadata is hidden information - I don't like hidden info.  
> That's about all I know. Never used it, never needed to - that I  
> know of.
>
> What is metadata? Why is it so important - especially to clipart?  
> Got any links or info I can read? Yes I know I can google/wiki, but  
> that often doesn't explain things, that a live human can.

Hi Chovynz,

Metadata may be hidden from "the human eye" but it is what computers  
use to sort, find, and otherwise manage items.

Imagine how hard it would be to find a clipart of a horse among the  
thousands of cliparts on OCAL without the tag/keyword "horse."
The computer can't look at the drawing and decide "this is a horse" so  
it is up to the tag metadata to enable the computer to sift the horse  
images out of the thousands of other ones.

The author and license (PD) are also included as metadata in all of  
OCAL's cliparts, and most of them seem to have some dates/times as  
well. Thus there is a way to tell who drew or submitted the item  
without every clipart needing to have a little signature/name at the  
bottom of the image. I've never used the date information, but perhaps  
it will be important to someone in the future.

Hopefully this helps explain the basics. I'm sure you can find tons of  
reading, but I don't have anything bookmarked.

Cheers,
Brian