Glossery

• a collection is a group of collections and/or byte streams
• asset is a byte stream representing an intellectual unit whether in-whole or in-part
• descriptive metadata represents one description of a collection
• metadata is an abbreviation of descriptive metadata
• endpoint is a particular context for metadata that will provide some functionality
• functionality is either a.) the answer to a particular question about a particular resource or b.) some action or set of actions that transforms the resource identified into something new for the client to consume
• field is a particular part of metadata. ex. title is a field
• core metadata (abbreviated "core") are the REQUIRED fields
• proxy metadata (abbreviated "proxy" or "proxies") are OPTIONAL descriptive metadata for an intellectual unit
• client is a program that is requesting metadata. A client may be acting on behalf of a biological being.
• technical metadata is technical information about an asset. This information may include but is not limited to width and height pixel dimensions of an image byte stream or duration of a video file or size in disk storage required by a particular byte stream.