11.6. Describing Language Resources Using OLAC Metadata

Members of the NLP community have a common need for discovering language resources with high precision and recall. The solution which has been developed by the Digital Libraries community involves metadata aggregation.

11.6.1. What Is Metadata?

The simplest definition of metadata is “structured data about data.” Metadata is descriptive information about an object or resource, whether it be physical or electronic. Although the term “metadata” itself is relatively new, the underlying concepts behind metadata have been in use for as long as collections of information have been organized. Library catalogs represent a well-established type of metadata; they have served as collection management and resource discovery tools for decades. Metadata can be generated either “by hand” or automatically using software.