Mediatyper

Mediatyper is a term used in information management to denote a classification scheme for digital media assets based on their type, format, and encoding. In practice, a mediatyper helps organize, validate, and route media within systems such as digital libraries, content management systems, and media asset management platforms.

The concept is closely aligned with the idea of a MIME type or media type, which identifies the nature of a file for software to process. A mediatyper taxonomy may map to MIME types but can also extend to higher-level categories (for example, image, audio, video, text) and to subtypes or container formats. Some implementations distinguish primary media categories (image, video) from encoding formats (jpeg, mp4) and from delivery formats (WebM, MP3).

In practice, mediatyper enables validation, filtering, and automated routing. Records in catalogs or APIs often include a mediatyper field, allowing applications to decide which viewers, editors, transcoders, or access controls apply. It is commonly expressed as a controlled vocabulary or hierarchical taxonomy and may be documented in metadata standards or platform-specific schemas.

There is no single global standard named mediatyper; rather, organizations define their own mediatyper schemes or adopt related vocabularies such as MIME types, schema.org's mediaType, Dublin Core, or vendor-specific taxonomies. Interoperability is improved by formal mappings between a mediatyper and widely recognized identifiers.

See also: MIME type, media type, content-type, schema.org, Dublin Core, asset management.