Metainformation

Abstract

In this chapter, we deal with the common but often misunderstood issue of “data about data”, or metadata, also called metainformation. To begin with, we explain how the term “metadata” is often used in the digital humanities and other fields in a loose manner, producing ambiguity and confusion. We then carefully pinpoint proper usage. After that, we describe the fact that metainformation is also information, the “meta” prefix being a mere qualifier that does not indicate something of a radically different nature. In particular, we show that metainformation is information that, at some point, plays the role of informing us about other information but which, apart from this, constitutes regular information, so every technique and tool that we may use on information is also applicable to metainformation. Then, we examine some typical scenarios of metainformation usage, including the expression of uncertainty and a better implementation of “transaction time” than the one often offered by the well-known bitemporal approach.