On Mon, 14 Apr 1997, Sam Saunders wrote:
> 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.
Yes... it produced 'interesting' results for a number of AHDS projects,
too... (did you know that Richard III was involved with ADS...?).
Still, it's an interesting attempt at further automating metadata
creation, and marks the next stage on from tools like mine
(www.ncl.ac.uk/~napm1/dublin_core/ but about to move to the ADS) and the
Nordic Metadata Project. It'll be interesting to see how this ocassionally
quirky tool evolves following this process of public testing...
> 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?
As far as web-wide searching goes, none of the biggies are yet using
Dublin Core (perhaps partly our fault, as we have continued to squabble
over semantics and syntax for longer than was good for us). However, a
number of projects such as the AHDS and its Service Providers are looking
at extensive use of DC for our search systems, and DSTC's prototype search
engine (http://www.dstc.edu.au/cgi-bin/RDU/Harvest/meta_simple_query.cgi)
makes use of DC for those sites it has been informed about...
As for simply using Alta Vista's limited <META> tagging... do you really
feel it's ENOUGH? Dublin Core is, admittedly, not all things to all
people, but it's surely better than a simple list of keywords a la Alta
Vista?
We need to settle Dublin Core, start using it, and bring the biggies along
with us as they realise the benefits...
Paul
== paul miller ============================= [log in to unmask] ==
collections manager, archaeology data service, king's manor
york, YO1 2EP, UK tel: +44 (0)1904 43 3954
== http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/ahds/ ==== fax: +44 (0)1904 43 3939 ==
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