Metadata for the Web

1
Metadata for the Web

• Andy Powell
• UKOLN
• University of Bath
• http//www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata

2
Aims?

• Think about uses for metadata, i.e. services
• Resource discovery
• Web-site management
• Practicalities
• Tools
• Information flow
• The future...

3
We are not

• going to come up with all the answers...
• or any answers!

4
Knowing me, knowing you(a ha)

• Metadata?
• HTML ltMETAgt tags?
• Using them?
• Dublin Core?
• Using it?
• Webmaster?
• Local search engines?

5
Three problems...

• Searching Alta Vista for'University of Bath'
• Searching within a university for all course
  module details
• Searching within a university for out of date
  pages

6
Alta Vista Metadata Example

• ltHTMLgtltHEADgt
• ltTITLEgtUKOLN Home Pagelt/TITLEgt
• ltMETA NAME"keywords" CONTENT"national centre,
  network information support, library community,
  awareness, research, information services, public
  library networking, bibliographic management,
  distributed library systems, metadata, resource
  discovery, conferences, lectures, workshops"gt
• ltMETA NAME"description" CONTENT"UKOLN is a
  national centre for support in network
  information management in the library and
  information communities. It provides awareness,
  research and information services"gt
• lt/HEADgt
• ltBODYgt
• ...

7
Group work - 1

• Groups of 3 or 4
• Discuss the example user-services and Web-site
  administration functions
• Can you think of others?
• Try and identify what metadata attributes are
  required for the examples

8
Group work - 2

• Groups of 3 or 4. List
• File formats
• Which file formats are made available on your
  Web-site?
• Information types
• Try to categorise the different types of
  information you make available - prospectus,
  course module details, job ads, etc
• Subject terms
• Is a list of subject terms (physics, chemistry,
  maths, etc) available for your site?

9
Dublin Core

• Ongoing development since about 1995
• Aimed at Web resource discovery primarily
• Used in a growing number of projects currently
• Not aimed at Web-site administration issues

10
Dublin Core - elements

• 15 element core metadata set

• Title
• Subject
• Description
• Creator
• Publisher
• Contributor
• Date
• Type

• Format
• Identifier
• Source
• Language
• Relation
• Coverage
• Rights

11
Dublin Core - HTML Example

• ltHTMLgtltHEADgt
• ltTITLEgtUKOLN Home Pagelt/TITLEgt
• ltMETA NAME"DC.Title CONTENT"UKOLN UK Office
  for Library and Information Networking"gt
• ltMETA NAME"DC.Subject" CONTENT"national centre,
  network information support, library community,
  awareness, research, information services, public
  library networking, bibliographic management,
  distributed library systems, metadata, resource
  discovery, conferences, lectures, workshops"gt
• ltMETA NAME"DC.Description" CONTENT"UKOLN is a
  national centre for support in network
  information management in the library and
  information communities. It provides awareness,
  research and information services"gt
• ltMETA NAME"DC.Creator" CONTENTIsobel Stark"gt
• lt/HEADgt
• ...

12
Metadata tools

• HTML or text editors
• tedious, hard to do bulk-changes
• Web-site management tools
• NetObjects Fusion
• Home grown solutions based on SSIs
• Other?

13
Who maintains metadata?

• Authors
• Webmaster
• Registry
• The library

14
Which pages?

• Which pages should have embedded metadata?
• All?
• 'Home' pages?
• Selected pages?
• Just the university home page?

15
Using metadata...

• Building search engines
• Most Web-site indexing tools use keywords and
  description?
• Harvest
• Isite
• SWISH-E
• ht//Dig
• Issues
• Frames
• Web-view vs. filesystem view
• Directory structure

16
The future...

• XML
• Resource Description Framework (RDF)
• Complex
• Needs tools
• There will be tools?

17
Dublin Core - RDF Example

• lt?xmlnamespace href"http//www.w3c.org/RDF/"
  as"RDF"?gt
• lt?xmlnamespace href"http//purl.oclc.org/RDF/DC/
  " as"DC"?gt
• ltRDFRDFgt
• ltRDFDescription RDFHREF"http//www.ukoln.ac.u
  k/"gt
• ltDCTitlegtUKOLN UK Office for Library and
  Information Networkinglt/DCTitlegt
• ltDCCreatorgtUKOLN Information Services
  Grouplt/DCCreatorgt
• ltDCSubjectgt
• national centre, network information
  support, library
• community, awareness, research, information
  services,
• public library networking, bibliographic
  management,
• distributed library systems, metadata,
  resource discovery,
• conferences, lectures, workshops
• lt/DCSubjectgt
• ltDCDescriptiongt
• UKOLN is a national centre for support in
  network
• information management in the library and
  information
• communities. It provides awareness,
  research and
• information services
• lt/DCDescriptiongt