Patent ID: 8024340

Claim:
A metadata collection system, comprising a plurality of content management servers, each of the content management servers storing content, managing the content and first metadata including location information and attribute information related to said content as local content, and managing second content metadata stored in another content management server as reference content, and a metadata collection apparatus that is connected to said plurality of content management servers and collects said first and second metadata from said plurality of content management servers, wherein: one of said content management servers comprises: a storage unit storing server information indicating whether or not a piece of content is managed by said content management server and said local content and/or said reference content; a tree structure generation unit that generates a tree structure comprising a plurality of hierarchically layered containers; a content allocation unit that allocates said local content and/or said reference content to specific containers in said tree structure based upon said attribute information; an identifier appending unit that appends a category identifier to each of said plurality of containers based upon said location information, the category identifier indicating whether or not said local content is allocated to a subject container; and a content disclosure unit that discloses to said metadata collection apparatus said tree structure with category identifiers and said local content and/or said reference content allocated therein; and said metadata collection apparatus collects said metadata related to a plurality of sets of content from the content management servers and conducts a check to determine whether there are identical metadata among the metadata collected from said content management servers.