[Web4lib] cms and metadata

[Alnisa Allgood]

Hi Crystal-

I'm not certain, when you say web publisher—does that mean the CMS or
web developer, or the person entering the document into the web
system?

It's not a library system, but we've had great success using
Expression Engine (a CMS), and creating page specific metadata for
clients.  The original project goal was twofold (1) the technical: was
it possible to adjust metadata on the per article basis; and (2) did
adapting this data improve search performance both onsite and offsite
(page ranking).

Both replies were a resounding yes. Google page rank increased, which
also seemed to influence rank at other search engines. Internal search
results seemed more accurate, and technically the process was very,
very easy.  Basically we decided which metadata would be served with
the web page, then just set-up calculations so if no user contributed
data was provided, default data would be used, otherwise, it used
either pure user data or a combination of user data with defaults.

The big end is of course the users, and garbage in means garbage out,
but we made it so as much data as possible could be collected from the
system itself. Things like 'author', 'publisher', publish date,
section, etc.  That way, the user just had to really complete two
fields: keywords, and language, and an optional third—summary. The
other fields could be modified by the user, but didn't have to be.

Metadata for clients transformed from being, just the client name with
the same five organizational keywords, and a manually updated
copyright date.  To being far more robust and with obvious metadata
distinction say between an article on credit card fraud versus an
article on home loans.

Alnisa


On 10/11/07, Crystal Knapp <crystal.knapp at state.or.us> wrote:
> Earlier this week, I posted a link to a survey the State Library of Oregon is conducting on metadata and taxonomies.  This survey is still up through Monday at http://library.state.or.us/services/surveys/survey.php?sid=170. I can post the results to the list if there is interest.
>
> I also wanted to pose a few questions to the list.  For those of you who use content management systems and maintain a search feature for your website, do you use metadata in conjunction with your pages?  Does anyone have a success story of having good quality metadata that is created by the web publisher (and not edited by library staff later)?
>
> I am asking because at the Oregon State Library, we are responsible for the metadata schema (and search feature) used by all Oregon government agencies, aka all Oregon.gov websites.  We currently have over 2,000 web publishers within Interwoven's Teamsite who all create their own metadata as they publish pages, and, as you can probably imagine, the metadata ranges in quality from good to useless.  We're looking for other solutions.  I'm curious to hear about other successful metadata contribution models for content management systems.  It'd also be interesting to hear if you just aren't using metadata at all within your cms.  I'm specifically referring to metadata used to assist with find-ability, not for preservation or document management.
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Crystal Knapp
> E-Government Librarian
> Oregon State Library
> crystal.knapp at state.or.us
> 503-378-5009
>
>
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