Metadata is no longer an unheard plural word in geospatial arena. Every curriculum or discussion on GIS, if not begins at least ends with the key word metadata. Even beginners blurt out without a blink that metadata is ‘data about data’. But the real question is does it convey any meaning too? Or is it simply one of the many fashionable and ready-to-use words conveying the so called updated knowledge? The present article explores the nuances related to metadata. It tries to unveil the 5W’s of metadata without getting into the grammatical gimmick of metadata being always treated as a plural noun, like the word ‘data’. It deliberates on the necessity to understand the significance of metadata by every geospatial user and by every geospatial creator to make geospatial institutional infrastructure a reality.

What is metadata?
Metadata or data about data or data documentation or information about information are the essential ingredients to understand what geospatial data is all about. It documents who, what, when, where, why and how about the data. It is as essential as the user’s manual that comes along with the car or any other electronic gadget. Metadata acts as a guide indicating in full advance the content, condition, quality and knowledge about datasets existence and related characteristics. Some essentials guiding the understanding of metadata creation are illustrated in Table 1. It can generally be thought of as information that describes or supplements the central data. The term is generally applied to electronic resources and refers to ‘data’ in the broadest sense - datasets, textual information, web pages, graphics, music and anything else that is likely to appear electronically (Milstead and Feldman 1999). It is structured, encoded data that describes the characteristics of information bearing entities to aid in the identification, discovery, assessment and management of the described entities.

Why metadata?
We need metadata all the time, if we want geospatial context to be recognised in multiple contexts in multiple places at multiple times. Embedded context of metadata makes it essential even when metadata per se is not inhibiting the functioning of basic data. Otherwise too at an informal level we are creating metadata-making class room notes all the times; jotting bibliographies or references in the reports, etc. Data about data makes the geospatial task more comparative and sustaining. It is all the more necessary when we are using data that we didn’t create as research material. If we inadvertently interpret the secondary data in a wrong way, then definitely the geospatial information will make the application useless and in some cases lethal too. The importance of metadata is quite varied. At the simplest level, metadata is just a bibliographic record used for searching and locating data. Another use of metadata is as a management record. This requires more information about the dataset like when it was last modified, what changes have been done on it, what restrictions are associated with it etc. The third and the most complex use of metadata is that it is designed to actually accompany a dataset, providing critical information on the dataset's development, specifications/structure and content.