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Re: Metadata

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From: John Foliot - Stanford Online Accessibility Program
Date: Aug 7, 2007 12:00PM

Paul Collins wrote:
> I wanted to first ask if someone could point me in the direction of a
> resource that explains how to create good accessible Metadata. I am
> guessing accessibility and SEO would go hand in hand with the correct
> metadata, but a resource that speaks about both would be great.

Hi Paul,

While I certainly respect Jukka's point of view, I would like to offer some
other thoughts for "balance". First, Jukka is correct that 'accessibility'
and 'metadata' really do not have a lot in common most of the time. This
however is not a reason to not continue to look at appropriate metadata for
your content, but your enquiry should be in context.

While the mainstream search engines today give virtually no weight to the
'standard' metadata "tags" (due to keyword stuffing, etc.), there still
remains times when metadata is important. One that springs to mind almost
instantly is video archives, where for the most part the *only* information
about a given video is the metadata stored in association with that video.
In the context of large information repositories (libraries for example),
metadata still plays an important role for the librarians, as it allows for
cross indexing and improved search-ability in an academic context: this is
something I see first-hand here at Stanford, where the libraries group uses
DC.metadata extensively. Sadly however, there are no commercial (i.e.
general public) search tools today that take advantage of DC.metadata, so
it's overall usefulness is somewhat limited. When I last asked some of my
internal contacts/friends at Yahoo! about DC.metadata the response I got was
essentially a rolling of the eyes - in other words, don't expect to see
support implemented any time soon. However, all of the major search engines
also sell search appliances (programs) for large institutions, and these
appliances can be fine tuned to meet client needs, so having a DC.metadata
search tool is not unreasonable.

>
> Which leads me to my next question; does anybody on here use Dublin
> Core metadata? I did last time I had to add metadata, but looking
> around at other reputable sites, it doesn't seem like anyone else
> does. Is Dublin Core not worth adding? Does Dublin core improve SEO,
> or do you need to add separate metadata for this?

Well, again, Search Engine Optimization today relies more on good structured
content, rather than specific metadata information. If this is the *only*
reason why you are considering adding extensive metadata, then you are
probably going to be disappointed with the results. This is not to say it's
pointless, but it ain't the magic bullet either. That said, I believe good
appropriate metadata makes some essential web content even "better", and
using a metadata standard such as Dublin Core is an extension of standards
based web development (IMHO).

Andy Powell of the University of Bath (UK) developed a nifty Perl based
DC.metadata generation tool [http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/cgi-bin/dcdot.pl], and I
have posted a very simple form based tool at
[http://soap.stanford.edu/plugins/dublincore/]. I believe it has already
been noted that Patrick Lauke has created a Firefox plug-in for viewing
DC.metadata [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/528], and I know
that Matthew "Smiffy" Smith has done some work in the DC.metadata space
including a spidering search appliance [http://dcms.smiffysplace.com] and
some work on developing a Drupal module [http://dcd.smiffysplace.com] that
would allow for indexing and on-the-fly editing of DC.metadata values.
Whilst I've not spoken with him in a while, the last I heard he was still
poking away at this, but it seems that work has slowed somewhat since the
spring.

So... Metadata can be important. Does it have a direct affect on
accessibility? Not really (although the argument could be made that if you
can't find it, it isn't accessible). If you are interested in a "complete"
standards based authored document, then considering DC.metadata is not a bad
idea, but understand why you are using it, and what your payoff will be.

Hope this helps.

JF
---
John Foliot
Academic Technology Consultant
Stanford Online Accessibility Program
http://soap.stanford.edu
Stanford University
560 Escondido Mall
Meyer Library 181
Stanford, CA 94305-3093
Tel: 650-862-4603