Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Unleashed

Effectively Using Metadata in Lists and Libraries

Essentially, metadata is “data about data,” and even users who don’t use SharePoint have experience with it every day. Any file created will have some metadata associated with it. For example, a simple Microsoft Word document needs to have a filename, which is a key piece of metadata. In addition, it will have a creation date and last modified date, and then Microsoft Word allows users to add additional metadata to the document. SharePoint 2010 exposes this basic metadata that is embedded in the document and allows administrators to add new metadata columns in document libraries that store the files.

Lists are essentially nothing but metadata, unless one or more attachments are added to an item ...