WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Metadata

for

From: S Perkins
Date: Aug 7, 2007 1:10PM

I have been trying to get a programmer interested in developing a DC search
engine for the past few years. It is possible to set up HARVEST and BROKER
to search only the <head></head> space of pages and return those with DC in
them. So far no one is interested. I think the difficulty of finding a
page actually using DC schema is a real barrier to its use. Why use it if
you can't find it with out having to sort through every page that has DC in
the body of the page but not in the head?

Thanks for the reference to Smitty.

Regards,

Steven C. Perkins



On 8/7/07, John Foliot - Stanford Online Accessibility Program <
<EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
> 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
>
>
>
>
>