Metadata is "data about data," of any sort in any media. An item of metadata may describe an individual datum, or content item, or a collection of data including multiple content items and hierarchical levels, for example a database schema. Metadata is used to facilitate the understanding, characteristics, and management usage of data.
#27322
Keyword Research and Product Lines
As you have probably heard over and over, keyword research is a pivotal step for success. Taken a step further, it can develop your product lines for you.
Pires, Halstatt. Ezine Articles (2006). Articles>Information Design>Metadata>E Commerce
#22562
The keyword selection process is not a short task. It takes an intimate knowledge of your market. In fact, choosing the right or wrong keywords could be the difference between your site being found by the search engines or remaining forever in search engine oblivion.
Reyen, Melissa. Publish (2004). Design>Web Design>Metadata>Search
#22395
Knowledge management in digital libraries is a universal problem. Keyword-based searching is applied everywhere no matter whether the resources are indexed databases or full-text Web pages. In keyword matching, the valuable content description and indexing of the metadata, such as the subject descriptors and the classification notations, are merely treated as common keywords to be matched with the user query. Without the support of vocabulary control tools, such as classification systems and thesauri, the intelligent labor of content analysis, description and indexing in metadata production are seriously wasted.
Jun, Wang. ASIST (2002). Articles>Information Design>Metadata
#27519
The keywords and phrases you use in your Meta description tag don't affect your page's ranking in the search engines (for the most part), but this tag can still come in handy in your overall SEO campaigns.
Whalen, Jill. High Rankings Advisor (2004). Articles>Web Design>Metadata>Search Engine Optimization
#21202
Meta Tags: What Are They and Which Search Engines Use Them?
Defining Meta Tags is much easier than explaining how they are used, and by which engines.
Zwicky, Richard. Metamend (2003). Design>Web Design>Search>Metadata
#26268
An information worksheet for designers developing metadata schemas for web design projects.
GotoMedia (2004). Design>Web Design>Metadata
#25705
Many classification systems suffer from an inflexible top-down approach, forcing users to view the world in potentially unfamiliar ways.
Merholz, Peter. Adaptive Path (2004). Articles>Information Design>Metadata
#18309
This article provides an overview of work completed at Tsinghua University Library in which a metadata framework was developed to aid in the preservation of digital resources. The metadata framework is used for the creation of metadata to describe resources, and includes an encoding standard used to store metadata and resource structures in information systems. The author points out that the Tsinghua University Library metadata framework provides a successful digital preservation solution that may be an appropriate solution for other organizations as well.
Niu, Jinfang. D-Lib Magazine (2002). Articles>Information Design>Web Design>Metadata
#22393
Metadata Generation: Processes, People and Tools
Metadata generation is the act of creating or producing metadata. Generating good quality metadata in an efficient manner is essential for organizing and making accessible the growing number of rich resources available on the Web. The success of digital libraries, the sustenance of interoperability – as promoted by the Open Archives Initiative – and the evolution of Semantic Web all rely on efficient metadata generation. This article sketches a metadata generation framework that involves processes, people and tools. It also presents selected research initiatives and highlights the goals of the Metadata Generation Research Project.
Greenberg, Jane. ASIST (2002). Articles>Information Design>Metadata
#28574
Metadata from the world of librarians and database searching is moving to center stage in our everyday lives. And the metadata 'revolution' is coming to us through pictures--those cute, happy, funny shots of kids, parents, neighbors and workmates that we love to share and post on the internet.
Brown, Fred. International Journal for Technical Communication (2007). Articles>Information Design>Metadata
#26792
Libraries must increasingly accommodate bibliographic records encoded with a variety of standards and emerging standards, including Dublin Core, MODS, and VRA Core. The problem is that many libraries still rely solely on MARC and AACR2. Meanwhile, the world of information is passing us by. How important is this problem? There are now literally millions of useful online items that lack MARC cataloging and will likely never be cataloged in MARC. We ignore these resources at our peril. Our users will justifiably seek assistance elsewhere, as many already have. Ignoring the problem will only make libraries increasingly marginalized. What are we to do?
Tennant, Roy. Library Journal (2004). Articles>Information Design>Metadata
#31524
What began in 1998 as the Colorado Digitization Project is now known as the Collaborative Digitization Program (CDP). The CDP’s Heritage West database represents not only the primary product of the organization, but also one of the oldest continuously operating collaborative repositories of cultural heritage metadata in the country. As a basis for the author’s forthcoming quantitative and qualitative analysis of Dublin Core metadata in Heritage West, the following article offers a history of how the CDP has, over time, organized and managed the metadata provision for its digitization projects.
Cronin, Christopher. First Monday (2008). Articles>Information Design>Metadata>Case Studies
#20944
Modeling Flexible Document Structures with XML Schema: Rhetorical Objects and Rhetorical Metadata 
With the adoption of eXtensible Markup Language (XML) on the rise, researchers in academia and industry are seeking to leverage the descriptive power of metadata to better understand the semantic structure of information (e.g., see Berners-Lee, 1998). But most interaction on the World Wide Web is what Geisler (2001) calls “document-centered,” involving the exchange of discourse a great deal larger and more complex than the basic units of meaning that semantics deals effectively with. As a result, the tools of semantics fall short of providing adequate metadata schemes which capture the most compelling features of effective discourse in any medium: emotional and ethical appeals which work in conjunction with appropriate logical and semantic structures.
Hart-Davidson, William, Victoria Moore and Joshua Porter. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (2003). Design>Information Design>XML>Metadata
#22392
New Metadata Standards for Digital Resources: MODS and METS
Metadata has taken on a new look with the advent of XML and digital resources. XML provides a new versatile structure for tagging and packaging metadata as the rapid proliferation of digital resources demands both rapidly produced descriptive data and the encoding of more types of metadata. Two emerging standards are attempting to harness these developments for library needs. The first is the Metadata Object and Description Schema (MODS), a MARC-compatible XML schema for encoding descriptive data. The second standard is the Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS), a highly flexible XML schema for packaging the descriptive metadata and various other important types of metadata needed to assure the use and preservation of digital resources.
Guenther, Rebecca and Sally McCallum. ASIST (2002). Articles>Information Design>Metadata>XML
#23819
Pattern Languages For Interaction Design
Discusses Christopher Alexander's theories about a group of related design patterns, referred to as a 'pattern language.'
Lombardi, Victor. Razorfish (2000). Design>Information Design>Metadata
#23198
Per un Accesso Multidimensionale all'informazione. O della Classificazione a Faccette
L'articolo fornisce una introduzione al concetto di 'classificazione a faccette', descrivendo: i suoi vantaggi rispetto ai sistemi di classificazione gerarchici; esempi di applicazione al web; un esempio di applicazione alla classificazione dei formaggi.
Rosati, Luca. AIfIA (2003). (Italian) Articles>Information Design>Metadata
#22701
PRISM: Publishing Requirements for Industry Standard Metadata
PRISM is an extensible XML metadata standard for syndicating, aggregating, post-processing and multi-purposing content from magazines, news, catalogs, books and mainstream journals.
#30062
The Problem of Ingesting and Delivering Complex Objects from Digital Repositories
The recent emergence of online digital archives has brought educators a major step closer to bringing original, reusable digital objects into undergraduate classrooms. Yet having to search multiple archives through mind-numbing search-and-browse routines can make it extremely difficult for educators to use the repositories successfully in their curriculum. What educators need is a suite of tools that allow them to reduce the search for relevance, expand the metadata with user-specific annotation, and tie the digital libraries' content directly to course materials. The keys to creating these resources are to build distributed networks of users and repositories. Cost containment often severely limits the amount of descriptive metadata that can be catalogued. Students and instructors create topical annotated bibliographies or lists of media clips (or segments of media clips) and 'publish' these for class, work group, or more general use. Allowing teachers and students to annotate and segment media as well as build their own galleries greatly enhance the educational value of digital objects by augmenting the minimal descriptive metadata and facilitating the building of complex digital objects tailored to the needs of specific education standards and curricula. The project uses a METS XML schema that provides an encoding format for administrative, descriptive, and structural metadata that is fully compliant with OAIS, and open source applications to facilitate ingestion and delivery (as well as help to control costs).
Kornbluh, Mark, Jerry Goldman and Dean Rehberger. Michigan State University (2005). Articles>Information Design>Metadata>XML
#23202
Putting it Together: Taxonomy, Classification and Search
The integration of taxonomy, classification, and search is covered in this article. The author reviews several possible software solutions.
Morris, Jeff. Transform (2003). Design>Web Design>Metadata
#21626
XML syntax is just the foundation for data interoperability. The next step is semantic transparency. Some groups are working to address this by defining entire document formats to be adopted wholesale, while other groups are working on ways to express common terminology and concepts at a more granular level. In this installment, Uche Ogbuji looks at XML Topic Maps Published Subjects and Universal Data Element Framework (UDEF), two ideas that take the granular approach by seeking to provide anchors in the semantic stream.
Ogbuji, Uche. IBM (2003). Design>Information Design>XML>Metadata
#21599
This is a general collection of my Semantic Web hackings, often using CWM and the Notation3 (N3) format.
Palmer, Sean B. InfoMesh (2001). Articles>Information Design>Metadata>Semantic
#21001
This piece speaks about the different parts of the Semantic Web and how they fit together.
Swartz, Aaron. LogicError (2003). Articles>Information Design>Metadata>Semantic
#21597
The Semantic Web is a conceptual information space in which the resources identified by URIs can be processed by machines. It operates on the principles of 'partial understanding' and 'inference' (being able to infer new knowledge of terms from data that you already understand), and hence evolution and transformation. Because the URIs are being used to represent the resources, systems can grow on a globally decentralized basis, similar to hypertext documentation systems on the early WWW.
Palmer, Sean B. InfoMesh (2001). Articles>Web Design>Semantic>Metadata
#21003
This document is not intended to teach you RDF via my own words, but rather to hand-hold you through the 'good' parts of the same journey I took. If it looks like a big link-list with menial comments from the peanut gallery, then you're not far off the mark of my intent. This is by no means definitive, nor was that the goal.
Disobey.com (2003). Articles>Information Design>Metadata>XML
#21002
The Semantic Web: An Introduction
This document is designed as being a simple but comprehensive introductory publication for anybody trying to get into the Semantic Web: from beginners through to long time hackers. Recommended pre-reading: the Semantic Web in Breadth.
Palmer, Sean B. InfoMesh (2001). Articles>Information Design>Metadata>Semantic
