[Web4lib] Metadata for Library Web Pages?

[Bret Parker]

I know that when we looked into using Verity Ultraseek engine as our own site indexing software there were ways to tune it to our liking using Dublin Core metadata. Not having pursued that path any further I cannot tell you much more than that.

We continue to use Google to search our site. Not having made a scientific study of search results, I cannot confirm what Google is or isn't doing with our meta tags. But having adopted the Dublin Core metadata habit, in this sort of way, I can say that I like it. I would add that I have plans for leveraging it in the future.  

As you can see from the samples below that this is a sincere attempt to attract search engines (or our own indexing engine when we get one), but it is not a cataloger's attempt to apply a controlled vocabulary to the metadata on our web pages. 

Even the use of the 'language' metadata term might have an application since in the future we will be adding more Spanish pages than the very few we currently have. (Compare samples 1-3 with sample 4.)

Sample 1, for this page:    http://www.stockton.lib.ca.us/calendars/fair/fcafe.htm 

      <link rel="schema.DC" href="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"/>
      <meta name="DC.title" content="Teen Poetry Cafe"/>
      <meta name="DC.subject" content="Library Programming and Events"/>
      <meta name="DC.publisher" content="Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library"/>
      <meta name="DC.language" content="en"/>
      <meta name="DC.date" content="2006-04-11"/>

Sample 2, for this page:  http://www.stockton.lib.ca.us/collection/findart.htm 

		<link rel="schema.DC" href="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" />
		<meta name="DC.title" content="Find Articles in newspapers and magazines" />
		<meta name="DC.description" content="Search tips for locating magazine, newspaper, and periodical articles, with focus on using the online databases." />
		<meta name="DC.subject" content="Periodicals" />
		<meta name="DC.subject" content="Newspapers" />
		<meta name="DC.subject" content="Magazines" />
		<meta name="DC.subject" content="eZines" />
		<meta name="DC.subject" content="Fulltext" />
		<meta name="DC.subject" content="Library use from home" />
		<meta name="DC.publisher" content="Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library" />
		<meta name="DC.language" content="en" />
		<meta name="DC.date" content="2006-02-02" />

Sample 3, for this page:   http://www.stockton.lib.ca.us/newspapr.htm 

		<link rel="schema.DC" href="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" />
		<meta name="DC.title" content="Find Books and more at the Library" />
		<meta name="DC.description" content="Search tips for locating newspaper articles, including use of online databases." />
		<meta name="DC.subject" content="Newspapers" />
		<meta name="DC.subject" content="Newspaper index" />
		<meta name="DC.subject" content="Fulltext" />
		<meta name="DC.subject" content="Stockton Record" />
		<meta name="DC.publisher" content="Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library" />
		<meta name="DC.language" content="en" />
		<meta name="DC.date" content="2006-04-10" />

Sample 4, for this page:   http://www.stockton.lib.ca.us/hispanic.htm 

		<link rel="schema.DC" href="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" />
		<meta name="DC.title" content="Informaci&oacute;n en Espa&ntilde;ol"/>
		<meta name="DC.description" content="Find information in Spanish on the World Wide Web == Buscar datos de informacion en espanol por el Internet." />
		<meta name="DC.subject" content="Internet"/>
		<meta name="DC.subject" content="Directories"/>
		<meta name="DC.subject" content="Spanish-language web sites"/>
		<meta name="DC.subject" content="English as a Second Language"/>
		<meta name="DC.publisher" content="Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library" />
      	<meta name="DC.language" content="es"/>
		<meta name="DC.date" content="2006-04-20" />

Comments on this approach are welcome, including pointing out any errors you might see with this.


Bret Parker, Senior Applications Programmer Analyst (MLIS)
Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library
City of Stockton (California)
bret.parker at ci.stockton.ca.us
(209) 937-7148

http://www.stockton.lib.ca.us


>>> Thomas Dowling <tdowling at ohiolink.edu> 4/20/2006 9:29 AM >>>
On 4/20/2006 12:13 PM, Popp, Mary Pagliero wrote:

> Hi!  We are working hard to add more metadata to our web pages so that
> they are more easily found by our own and other search engines.  I am
> writing to ask all of you two questions:
> 

I understood that the commercial search engines ignore inline metadata
because they has been so frequently abused for index spamming.  Can
anyone confirm?  If so, your search engine is probably the only one that
will make use of it (which is still valuable!), so it may not be
important to match anyone else's standards.

-- 
Thomas Dowling
tdowling at ohiolink.edu 
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