METADATA: ENHANCED ACCESS TO ONLINE CONTENT

摘要

The exponential proliferation of content on the Internet makes it increasingly challenging to retrieve quality information quickly. Searchers rely upon search engines that may have limited effectiveness and scope. Even skilled researchers find they must wade through irrelevant citations in their quest for valuable information. Labeling content with appropriate metadata enhances information access and makes the search process more efficient and effective. The first part of this paper discusses metadata, a term meaning data about data. It examines the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, which acts as a general core of semantics for resource description and has become the standard to be followed. Initiatives to expand the Dublin Core and support more domain-specific content are addressed. The second part of this paper reviews the development of metadata schema suited to business environments. It examines metadata within the extended context of the Dublin Core Business Special Interest Group, DC-Biz. DC-Biz is committed to promoting the use of Dublin Core in internal and cross company business environments; identifying business sectors and commercial resources (e.g. information, services, catalogs, products) that could benefit from the use of the DC standard; highlighting within the DC community the commercial ramifications of DC developments; and discussing the possible expansion of Dublin Core to accommodate information vital to commercial requirements and uses. Three industry efforts that built upon Dublin Core are cited, with particular attention to one where a controlled vocabulary was elaborated to communicate more fully data about digitized publications. The focus of these efforts was on detailing specific content types, associating each of them with the expanded DC element set so that a high level of granularity could be achieved. Although this work relates to a particular product, the assumptions and processes that accompanied it have broader application and may be of interest to others.