BCS Data Management SG:
Keith Gordon on data, information and metadata

In September 2007, the BCS Data Management Specialist Group met to mark the publication by BCS of Keith Gordon’s book ‘Principles of Data Management’. Keith, a KIDMM member from the outset, presented an extremely cogent account of the relationship between information, data and metadata, though one that may be unfamiliar to some.

At our KIDMM meeting on 6 March 2006, it had been Keith who pointed up the difference between how publishers and librarians use the term ‘metadata’, and how it is used by data management people and data modellers. He returned to this topic in the course of this talk.

Before that, Keith also overturned the often-used definition of the relationship between data and information, in which information is said to be ‘data in context’. While there is a grain of truth in that formulation, Keith notes that it starts with information, it ends with information, and data is a special abstracted encoding for the purposes of communication and processing.

Here as an audio file

There does not exist at present a proper text account of this talk. However, it was recorded by Conrad Taylor and has been edited and made ready as an MP3 audio file of about 40 minutes’ length.

Download the MP3 from this link