Isobel Stark forwarded this:
> OCLC has put together a system which will produce metadata for a given
> URL. It is not always correct, it gave us the heading astrology not
> astronomy, but it is great to see how these tags look and have some
> filled in correctly. We will soon be using these tags and this will
> speed thins up quite a bit. If you would like to check out the system visit:
>
http://orc.rsch.oclc.org:9016/dcms/
I had put my head above the parapet and whinged a bit about
Metababble last week - so I thought I had better follow this up. As a
result I have one observation, one question, and one piece of
development that I would be grateful for private comments about.
Observation:
The OCLC automatic indexing system is certainly wayward. Sending in
a couple of test documents yielded such odd descriptors that I
blush to think of the results. The meanings and purposes of a text
can obviously not be guessed at by a machine. It's difficult enough
even for a specialist, so I guess we're not out of business for a
year or two in offering professional indexing.
Question:
Who or what might be using the Dublin Core and its family to
organise web-wide searching at the moment? AltaVista promise to use
meta tags in a much more restricted way, so is there some benefit in
pandering to that widely used search tool?
Request:
Is there anyone with a minute or two spare to have a look at the
amateur tagging that I have started to put in the <HEAD></HEAD> of our most
recent documents? They're aimed at AltaVista, and do nothing towards
Dublin Core just yet. But I don't understand all of what I have
done, and would appreciate a word from the wise about anything that
might be causing grief to others. Coming in from our search page at
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/BEID.html
you would best click on the "Most recent" button and look at the
source code for the HTML version of one of the most recent 2 or 3.
Sam Saunders
============================
Education-Line
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol
Brotherton Library
University of Leeds,
Leeds LS2 9JT
0113 233 5525 (Fax 0113 233 5524)
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