Andrew,
this query was recently posed at the Electronic Libraries Forum in Adelaide.
Speakers who had recently completed overseas trips advised that the search
engine developers have no intention of providing the kind of functionality
that you mention below, because it is in their commercial interests to keep
people at their sites for as long as possible.
Even developers of Intranet systems won't be interested until buyers put
pressure on them to develop metadata-enabled search engines.
As a consequence, in Australia, various organisations and portals have
developed their own, or are currently developing them.
For example:
Organisations
State Library of Tasmania - http://search.tased.edu.au/tol/
Portals
BEP - Business Entry point - http://www.business.gov.au/search/advanced.html
which is AGLS-enabled.
Under development at
CSIRO (Canberra)
Queensland Government Demonstration site at
http://www.dstc.edu.au/RDU/HotMeta/qld/search.html
Debbie
Metadata Coordinator
National Initiatives And Collaboration Branch
ph. 02 6262 1673
fx. 02 6273 4535
e-mail [log in to unmask]
http://purl.nla.gov.au/metaweb/home
> ----------
> From: Andrew Wilson[SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Wednesday, 25 November 1998 11:06 AM
> To: 'DC'
> Subject: Search engines
>
> I have a general enquiry I'd like to throw open to the whole list. If
> this has been dealt with before, I apologise in advance for going over
> old ground.
>
> As understand it none of the search engines accessible on the web
> (Yahoo, Alta Vista, Excite, Infoseek, etc.) will actually read DC meta
> tags. Since its fairly obvious that search engines which use metadata
> will be critical to uptake and successful deployment of metadata schemas
> I'm wondering if there is any ongoing dialogue between the DC community
> and the search engine developers. Both communities are primarily based
> in North America so it would seem like a reasonable step. Can anyone
> tell me what is happening and how much progress has been made with
> getting search engine developers to start working on search engines that
> actually read and understand metadata embedded in web pages?
>
> thanks,
> Andrew Wilson
> National Archives of Australia
> Email: [log in to unmask]
> Ph: +61 2 6212 3694
> Fax: + 61 2 6212 3997
>
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|