To provide a method capable of lightening the load of maintenance of a collection destination list on a system administrator by automatically changing a data collection destination and improving the use efficiency of a data storage medium by deterring unnecessary data from being collected.

When a user is authenticated and retrieves meta-data, a meta-data automatic gathering system stores statistic data in a statistic database 112. A statistic analyzing means 107 takes statistic analyses by classifications of meta-data with the statistic data and the data collection destination is changed according to a data collection destination list 109. Consequently, unnecessary data collection is deterred to improve the use efficiency of the storage medium for a meta-data storage database.