07 Sep structured content

Digital assets have alternately been described as data and content. There are two separate definitions, one for structured data and one for structured content. Structured content is about consistent process for managing unstructured data (information in files that do not follow a consistent data structure). I know this is confusing, but I didn’t get to weigh in on this one. Structured data is digitally encoded information that is organized as databases in rows and columns with headers and unique identifiers, and is much easier to graph, analyze, search, filter, sort and associate with other digitally encoded information using primary and foreign keys. There is a spectrum of structure including spreadsheets with rows, columns and tabs, object data management systems with complex linking structures, relational databases with tables and primary and foreign keys, and big data systems with less structure and more flexibility. In other words, there is such a thing as semi-structured data, but I haven’t yet seen a definition for semi-structured content – thank heavens.

Unstructured Content