On Friday we learned about metadata, a topic I had never heard of previously, but was nonetheless interesting. I never really thought about what happened when I searched something on Google, or why websites were always asking me to complete random surveys, but now I understand that they fall under the category of collecting data. Metadata, I learned, is not only a large part of research and academia, but it is also very relevant to everyday life.
Creating or recording metadata, I am not sure what the correct term is, seemed simple at first. My categories of analysis for paintings and buildings were in the ball park. For example, for the Cathedral, I had the category of builder, which is part of a larger offical section called agent. Regardless, I was still able to pinpoint what topics metadata attempts to capture.
However, when it came to trying to define metadata for a person, I struggled. I think my major issue was that I was trying to come up with categories that a picture would be tagged under if someone was searching for a name attached to a picture. Essentially, I was doing it as if the searcher had a picture of a person and was searching for their name. Assigning metadata to an actual physical person, not just a picture of a person, did not even come across my mind. My topics like gender, appearance, hair color, and eye color, are completely different than what is offically used to assign metadata to a person. I had never thought of categorizing a person in that way, but I guess it makes sense.
Overall, learning about metadata taught me a lot about how things are organized, and the structure behind that. It also showed me that metadata is a wide cateogory that can be applied to unexpected things, like people.