Terms and conditions of use include the copyright status of the object—whether it is in the public domain or is copyright protected—and any restrictions on use. The user should be informed how to obtain permission for restricted uses and how to cite the material for allowed uses.

Administrative metadata is information intended to facilitate the management of resources. It includes information such as when and how an object was created, who is responsible for controlling access to or archiving the content, what processing activities have been performed in relation to it, and what restrictions on access or use apply.

Technical metadata and preservation metadata are particular types of administrative metadata. Technical metadata describes digital files and includes capture information, format, file size, checksum, sampling frequencies, and similar characteristics.

Structural metadata relates the pieces of a compound object together and/or bundles related objects into a package. For example, if a book is digitized as individual page images, structural metadata can record information concerning the order of files (page numbering) and how they relate to the logical structure of the book (table of contents) is also required.

The linkage between a metadata record and the resource it describes may take one of two forms: elements may be contained in a record separate from the item, as in the case of the library's catalog record; or the metadata may be embedded in the resource itself.

The Dublin Core metadata standard is a simple yet effective element set for describing a wide range of networked resources. The Dublin Core standard includes two levels: Simple and Qualified. Simple Dublin Core comprises fifteen elements; Qualified Dublin Core includes three additional elements (Audience, Provenance and RightsHolder), as well as a group of element refinements (also called qualifiers) that refine the semantics of the elements in ways that may be useful in resource discovery.

Another way to look at Dublin Core is as a "small language for making a particular class of statements about resources". In this language, there are two classes of terms -- elements (nouns) and qualifiers (adjectives) -- which can be arranged into a simple pattern of statements.