METADATA COLLECTION SYSTEM, CONTENT MANAGEMENT SERVER, METADATA COLLECTION APPARATUS, METADATA COLLECTION METHOD AND PROGRAM

In a metadata collection system comprising a plurality of content management servers each capable of managing content and content metadata as local content and managing content metadata stored in another content management server as reference content and a metadata collection apparatus connected with the plurality of content management servers to collect metadata from the plurality of content management servers, the metadata collection apparatus collects metadata from the individual content management servers based upon server information held at the content management servers and category identifiers appended to tree structures generated at the content management servers by individually referencing the plurality of content management servers.