Metadata

Metadata Standards Group

Authors

Grant Malcom - Chair; University Website Coordinator.

James Arthur - Web Coordinator, Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry.

Christine Bapty - Senior Administrative Officer/Senior Project Archivist, University Archives & Central Records.

Brian Poleykett - CygNET Web Coordinator.

Monika Szunejko - Coordinator; Database Standards and Quality Control.

Background

Metadata is structured data that describes an information resource. There are many times where you want to include information about a document that is not actually part of the document itself. Such information is know as meta data. Examples of metadata include the table of contents of a book, information in a library catalogue, and the fields at the top of email messages. Effective use of metadata will assist effective searching of information resources and facilitate access to and maintenance of information.

Summary of Recommended Metadata

1. Title

2. Creator

3. Subject & Keywords

4. Description

5. Publisher

6. Date

   1. Date Created

   2. Date Valid

   3. Date Modified

   4. Date Issued

7. Rights

8. Format

9. Source

10. Language

11. Audience

12. Identifier

13. Generator

Appendix A - Index of metadata elements.

Title

Tag: DC.Title

Description: The Title field refers to the concise name given to the web page or resource, usually by its creator or author.

Rules: Avoid using generic site names.

Benefits: The title distinguishes one page or site from another. This aides in the identification of a web page, particularly when the page is listed by some Internet search engines.

DC.Title is used in addition to the HTML-level <TITLE> tag, since it includes only the proper document title. It is devoid of the corporate-level branding which often accompanies the document title in the <TITLE> tag.

Example: <meta name=�DC.Title� content=�How to use EndNote.�>

But not:

<meta name=�DC.Title� content=�UWA Library - How to use EndNote.�>

Reference: N/A

Implementation: Required for: Central web sites; Faculty & School web sites.

Recommended for: Other web pages.

Creator

Tag: DC.Creator

Description: The Creator field should encompass the person, group or team primarily responsible for creating the intellectual content of the web page or resource.

Rules: If it is the name of a person, surname should be written first, then followed by the initial. In the case of a group or team, if a hierarchy is known, list the parts of the hierarchy from largest to smallest.

Multiple instances of the DC.Creator tag should be used for each creator which cannot be grouped into a larger unit.

Benefits: Identifies the person, group or team responsible for the creation of the intellectual property.

Example: <meta name=�DC.Creator� content=�IAAF, iaaf@iaaf.uwa.edu.au�>

Reference: N/A

Implementation: Required for: Central web sites; Faculty & School web sites.

Recommended for: Other web pages.

Subject & Keywords

Tag: DC.Subject
Keywords

Description: The keyword field should express concisely the subject matter of the web page or resource. The keywords are the most significant words either in the web page or which describe the theme or content of the web page.

Rules: Keywords are a single word or a phrase of two or three words. For lengthier descriptions using sentences and/or abstracts use the Description field.

Both tags must be used.

Benefits: Concisely describes the scope of the document, enabling the search engine to retrieve it quickly and accurately. Keywords can be included which are not found in the body of the document, eg misspellings, common abbreviations, or related terms.

Both DC.Subject and Keywords tags must be included to accommodate both the new search engines which obey Dublin Core Standards, and old-fashioned search engines which only recognize the Keywords field.

Example: <meta name=�DC.Subject� content=�phone, computer network, Internet Communications, Telephone�>
<meta name=�Keywords� content=�phone, computer network, Internet Communications, Telephone�>

Reference: N/A

Implementation: Required for: Central web sites; Faculty & School web sites.

Recommended for: Other web pages.

Description

Tag: DC.Description
Description

Description: A textual description of the content of the resource, including concise sentences , summaries and abstracts. This usually consists of one or more sentences drawn from the web page but may also be a description of content not using sentences from the web page.

Rules: For one to three word phrase descriptions, use Keywords.

Both tags must be used.

Benefits: In conjunction with Keywords, describes the web page or resource in such a way that it can be retrieved quickly and accurately by Internet search engines. Displayed as the document summary by some Internet search engines.

Both DC.Description and Description tags must be included to accommodate both the new search engines which obey Dublin Core Standards, and old-fashioned search engines which only recognize the Description field.

Example: <meta name=�DC.Description� content=�Homepage for UWA, located in Western Australia.�>

<meta name=�Description� content=�Homepage for UWA, located in Western Australia.�>

Reference: N/A

Implementation: Required for: Central web sites; Faculty & School web sites.

Recommended for: Other web pages.

Publisher

Tag: DC.Publisher

Description: A person, group or team that makes the web page or resource available in its current form, such as a publishing house, a University Department or a corporate entity.

Rules: If the publisher is the same as the Creator do not fill in this field.

If the publisher is the name of a person, the surname should be written first, then followed by the initial. In the case of a group or team, if a hierarchy is known, list the parts of the hierarchy from largest to smallest.

Benefits: Identifies the person, group or team that makes the web resource available in its current form on the web. DC.Publisher is especially useful in cases where the document�s creator has no obvious relationship to the document�s publisher. For example, Dr Joe Bloggs in the Faculty of Arts may create a document, which is published by DUIT Multimedia.

Example: <meta name=�DC.Publisher� content=�The University of Western Australia, Faculty of Science�>

Reference: N/A

Implementation: Required for: Central web sites.

Recommended for: Faculty & School web sites.

Date

There is a variety of date metadata which should be collected.

Date Created

Tag: DC.Date.Created

Description: The date associated with the creation of the web page or resource.

Rules: Enter in the form YYYY-MM-DD e.g. 2002-02-05 corresponds to 5^th February, 2002. The digits should be separated with dashes.

Benefits: Establishes a date of creation for the intellectual property in web form.

Example: <meta name=�DC.Date.Created� schema=�W3C-DTF� content=�2002-02-05�>

Reference: W3C-DTF Schema.
http://www.w3c.org/TR/NOTE-datetime/

Implementation: Required for: Central web sites.

Recommended for: Faculty & School web sites.

Date Valid

Tag: DC.Date.Valid

Description: The date or a date range of validity of a resource.

Rules: Enter in the form YYYY-MM-DD e.g. 2002-02-05 corresponds to 5^th February, 2002. The digits should be separated with dashes.

Benefits: Establishes a date of validity for the web page. Clients and/or authors know when the content of the document becomes unstable.

In effect, this is the expiry date of the resource. An explicit Date Reviewed was not selected for the UWA Standard because it only informs the reader when the content was previously reviewed and therefore validated - it does not give any indication that the content will every be reviewed again.

Example: <meta name=�DC.Date.Valid� schema=�W3C-DTF� content=�2001-03-14�>

Reference: See above.

Implementation: Required for: Central web sites.

Recommended for: Faculty & School web sites.

Date Modified

Tag: DC.Date.Modified

Description: The date associated with the last modification of the web page.

Rules: Enter in the form YYYY-MM-DD e.g. 2002-02-05 corresponds to 5^th February, 2002. The digits should be separated with dashes.

Benefits: Establishes a date that the page was last modified. This facilitates the tracking of different versions of the document�s content over time.

Example: <meta name=�DC.Date.Modified� schema=�W3C-DTF� content=�1999-02-23�>

Reference: See above.

Implementation: Required for: Central web sites; Faculty & School web sites.

Recommended for: Other web sites.

Date Issued

Tag: DC.Date.Issued

Description: The date of formal publication of the web page or resource.

Rules: Enter in the form YYYY-MM-DD e.g. 2002-02-05 corresponds to 5^th February, 2002. The digits should be separated with dashes.

Benefits: Establishes a date that the page was published on the web, and first became available for use. This has legal implications, especially with regard to copyright.

Example: <meta name=�DC.Date.Issued� schema=�W3C-DTF� content=�1999-11-26�>

Reference: See above.

Implementation: Required for: Central web sites.

Recommended for: Faculty & School web sites.

Rights

Tag: DC.Rights

Description: Information about rights held in and over the resource. A rights management statement, an identifier that links to a rights management statement or an identifier that links to a service providing information about rights management for the resource.

Rules: Best practice involves pointing directly to the owner�s copyright statement (URL).

The University should always be acknowledged as having copyright for all official University web pages.

A DC.Rights tag may need to be created to accompany each instance of the DC.Creator tag; eg if there were multiple creators which could not be grouped into a larger unit.

Benefits: Includes the name of policy(s) that assert the intellectual property rights to the document; eg copyright.

Example: <meta name=�DC.Rights� content=� http://www.ucs.uwa.edu.au/policy/uwa/regulations�>

Or:

<meta name=�DC.Rights� content=�Copyright 1999, Legal Services, The University of Western Australia�>

Reference: N/A

Implementation: Required for: Central web sites; Faculty & School web sites.

Recommended for: Other web pages.

Format

Tag: DC.Format

Description: The Format field displays the data format and/or the dimensions (e.g. size, duration) of the resource.

Rules: Use Internet Media Type (IMT) Scheme; also known as MIME Types.

Benefits: DC.Format may be used to identify the software and hardware needed to display or operate the resource. This tag ensures that the MIME type is associated with the document, regardless of where it is stored, or how it is issued.

Example: <meta name=�DC.Format� content=�text/html�>

Reference: Media Types.
http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/iana/assignments/media-types/media-types

Implementation: Required for: Central web sites.

Recommended for: Faculty & School web sites.

Source

Tag: DC.Source

Description: The Source field cites another resource from which the web page or resource is derived. This field can be a URL,ISBN or textual description.

Rules: Source is only used if the information is full or partly derived from another source. Standard citation format must be used.

Multiple instances of DC.Source should be used to indicate multiple source documents, if required.

Benefits: DC.Source acknowledges the contribution to this document derived from other documents. This preserves the intellectual property rights of the source documents.

Example: <meta name=�DC.Source� content=� Milkman, R. 1998, 'The new American workplace: high road or low road?', in Workplaces of the Future, eds P. Thompson & C. Warhurst, Macmillan Press, London, pp. 22-34.�>

Reference: UWA Library - How to cite your sources.
http://www.library.uwa.edu.au/guides/citingsources/

Implementation: Required for: Central web sites.

Recommended for: Faculty & School web sites.

Language

Tag: DC.Language

Description: The primary language of the intellectual content of the resource.

Rules: One of the two- or three-letter codes for the world�s languages should be used.

For example, the code for English is �en�.

Benefits: Ensures that a system understands which language was the primary language the document was written in. This may improve document accessibility.

Example: <meta name=�DC.Language� content=�en�>

Reference: Code for the Representation of the Names of Languages.
http://www.oasis-open.org/cover/iso639a.html

Implementation: Required for: Central web sites.

Recommended for: Faculty & School web sites.

Audience

Tag: DC-Ed.Audience

Description: The category of users for whom the resource is intended.

Rules: Use audience groups such as UWA staff, UWA students, All internet users, or a University unit code.

Benefits: Identifies which client group a document is intended for.

Example: <meta name=�DC-Ed.Audience� content=�UWA Staff, UWA Students�>

Reference: Education Working Group: Draft Proposal
http://dublincore.org/documents/education-namespace/

Implementation: Required for: Central web sites; Faculty & School web sites.

Recommended for: Other web sites.

Identifier

Tag: DC.Identifier

Description: A string or number used to uniquely identify the resource. Examples for network resources include URLs and URNs.

Rules: Use the URL or URN of the document.

Benefits: If the document is removed or copied from its original location, the original location is identified.

Example: <meta name=�DC.Identifier� content=�http://www.uwa.edu.au/index.html�>

Reference: N/A

Implementation: Required for: Central web sites; Faculty & School web sites.

Recommended for: Other web pages.

Generator

Tag: Generator

Description: The tool that was used to create the resource/page content.

Rules: The full name and version number of the software used.

Benefits: Documents created in one application may not be useable by other applications. Different versions of the same application may also have different functionality.

Example: <meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 5.0">

Reference: N/A

Implementation: Required for: Central web sites; Faculty & School web sites.

Recommended for: Other web pages

Appendix A - Index of metadata elements