The Understanding Process Of Metadata In Chinese Archives

Metadata is a "foreign" concept for China Archival Science. From a disciplinarypoint of view, it began to use in computer field and gradually accepted and applied byother disciplines and areas. Archival science is one of them. From the view of thedifferent study areas, archival metadata was introduced by foreign archival circles firstly(the United States, etc.). China Archival Science absorbed and drew upon manyoutstanding achievements from foreign archival science in knowledge and research ofmetadata.In the1990s and the beginning of the twentieth century, China archivist circle beganunderstanding and researching metadata. So far there have been more than10years.Starting with simple introduce of the metadata, China Archival Science has alreadygradually extended to research the metadata in every aspect. In author’s view, archivalmetadata can be named as “archives’ archive”. It records the whole process of theadministration of electrical records dynamically. It ensures the real, complete, andeffective of the electrical document, also ensure the original records. The focus of thisarticle is not for the exploration of the metadata technique problems, but rather focuseson process of cognition since metadata was introduced into China. Author divided thepaper into three parts base on the materials and research achievement of archival science.The main line of which is the archival community awareness and research history of themetadata, in each stage of the writing process, author read representative achievementsand writings. After10years of unremitting efforts on the study of the file metadata whichis very fruitful, but also makes the awareness of the file, metadata concepts and theirapplications continue to deepen and develop. This is the result of joint efforts of thedomestic archival community.