All JEAN entities can have Attributes, which are values attached to the entities. These may range from descriptions of the entity to references to files on the computer's filestore. They may be used to actually store the information that JEAN is organizing, or they may reference it, or add additional information to a referenced item. Different sets of attributes can be defined for each of the three types of JEAN entity: categories, groups and items. In some catalogs one or more types of entity may not have any attributes; it is rare to find a catalog which does not define attributes for items, but often groups and categories are only used for organizing and do not carry any information themselves, so do not have any.
Attributes are organized into pages which appear as tabs in the AttributeDisplayPanel which is on the right hand side of the JEAN window alongside the catalog. The values of attributes may not be changed directly in the AttributeDisplayPanel but they may be changed in one of three ways.