Project
Summary
Project
Costs and Benefits
Benefits
to Project Participants
Participants
Project
Reports
Contact
Us |
Benefits
to
State Agencies
What
are the benefits to agencies that participate in the Foundations Project?
-
Citizens, stakeholders, researchers and staff will obtain better
search results by using metadata. With this type of search, an agency's
electronic information may be located and posted higher in the results
lists of Bridges searches as well as those of other commercial and public
search engines.
-
Dublin Core metatags can be used for document management of a Web site.
-
Qualified Dublin Core metadata and cataloging will aid in the discovery
of increasing amounts of agency data.
How
Foundations Works
The project is based on the need for systematic and accurate discovery
and use of the vast quantity of environmental information that resides
on Minnesota state agency servers.
-
For agency Web pages (including documents, home pages, and databases),
the agency uses the Minnesota
Metadata Guidelines - DC and Dublin
Core elements to create a description of each major item.
-
An agency Web keeper or a professional cataloger catalogs the piece, then
embeds metatag information about the resource in the hidden, <HEAD>
section of the Web page. This information is not displayed on the screen
when "browsed," but is found by the Bridges spider (and those of major
search engines).
-
Bridges searching technology spiders a Web site to create a record for
each page.
-
A database is built of the Web documents full text; any embedded meta information
is discovered as well.
-
The user enters terms for searching such as a keyword or general subject.
-
The Bridges search engine finds information that matches the parameters
of the search and displays the results. Reading the description, the searcher
can hyperlink to the appropriate page(s) for viewing.
What
Tools and Assistance are Available to Agencies?
The following items and tools are available for agencies to use:
Workshop(s)
-
The Foundations staff offers workshops on Implementing Dublin Core Metadata. Contact
us if you would like to attend these workshops. Contact
the Foundations Project
Getting Started
with Metadata Application
-
Metadata application is a process that assigns subject categories and information
about resources to documents, using a controlled vocabulary thesaurus and
identification rules. It also involves identifying and describing documents to allow
for more precise searching.
-
Contact Eileen Quam
to have Web-based environmental information professionally cataloged with
Dublin Core metatags.
|
