17 Metadata, or Information about Your Thesis

Part of creating an accessible thesis is making sure the reader can navigate its contents. An important element of navigation is making sure your document includes pertinent metadata. Metadata is, most basically, information about your document. This includes its title, author, subject, keywords, and the language the document has been written in.

While you will include metadata about your thesis when you register on ProQuest, you can also include this information directly in your thesis. Setting the thesis title, and then making sure it displays properly in your PDF, supports discoverability. Making sure the document language is set to the language your thesis is written in gives screen readers the information needed to pronounce words correctly.

In you are working on a PC, you can add metadata to your Word file by going to File > Info > Properties > Advanced Properties. Click the Summary tab and enter your information. Verify that the document language has been set by going to Review > Language > Language Preferences.

If you are working on a Mac, you can add metadata to your Word file by going to File > Properties. Click the Summary tab and enter your information. Verify that the document language has been set by going to Review > Language.

Once you’ve converted your Word document to a PDF, check to make sure the information you’ve included in your Word file has transferred to the new file type. Open the PDF, and go to File > Properties > Description. Check the language by clicking on the Advanced tab. Go to the bottom of the window to make sure Language is set under Reading Options.

One more step: To ensure accessibility, you will need to make sure the thesis title you’ve set—and not the file name—appears when you open the PDF. Sometimes, when you’ve converted your thesis to PDF, the file name can become jumbled or end up reading as a series of letters and numbers. To make sure the title appears accurately once you open the PDF, go to File > Properties > Initial View. Under Window Options, make sure Show is set at Document Title.