CreationDate

CreationDate is a metadata field or attribute that records the date and time when an object was created. It is used across digital assets, documents, datasets, and records to establish provenance and enable chronological organization. The term may appear as CreationDate, CreateDate, or a similarly labeled field within metadata schemas or software applications.

In metadata standards, CreationDate is a common element for capturing when a resource came into existence. Dublin Core includes a Created element for the date of creation. Digital asset schemas used in images, documents, and multimedia may expose a CreateDate field or an equivalent creation timestamp, sometimes alongside other time-related fields like DateTimeOriginal or DateCreated. The exact representation and granularity can vary by standard and implementation.

In computing environments, CreationDate often corresponds to the birth or creation time of an object. On Windows, files have a creation timestamp, while Unix-like systems historically emphasized other times such as modification or change times; modern systems and APIs may provide or preserve a birth time as CreationDate. Some applications derive creation dates from embedded metadata when a dedicated field is missing, while others rely on filesystem timestamps.

Practical use and challenges include provenance tracking, auditing, and chronological sorting. CreationDate can differ from the date an item was authored, published, or modified, and may be affected by time zone settings, clock reliability, and data migration. Best practices include standardizing on a universal time (often UTC) and an unambiguous format (such as ISO 8601), preserving the original value, and documenting any transformations or approximations when the creation date is inferred rather than recorded natively.