On Thu, Feb 16, 2012 at 7:13 AM, suzanne.pilsk <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> (Pssst: Does it matter if you call it data and I call it metadata?)
>

It may matter only to the extent that we each use the terms appropriately
relative to our own use and context.

On a related note, I would make a weak initial claim that, relative to an
application &context, metadata is sufficient if it allows for the data
which it described to be used for that specific application.

The question of what is the optimal amount of metadata can then be
considered to be the point at which the marginal cost of adding more
metadata is equal to the expected marginal benefit of adding that metadata
across all applications.

The calculation is not trivial: both the cost and the benefit of adding a
specific metadatum are unlikely to be strictly  independent of other
metadata; for example, adding an extra title from a work in hand may not
cost as much as adding a different set of metadata, but it may not provide
as much aggregate value given the presence of the correlated fields.

Simon