A Lightweight Approach To Support of Resource Discovery Standards

1. A Lightweight Approach To Support of Resource Discovery Standards • The Problem • Dublin Core is an international standard for resource discovery metadata. However Dublin Core is still not widely deployed, due to: • Lack of support by the major search engine vendors • Lack of support by authoring tools • Lack of support by indexing packages • Concerns that formats for Dublin Core has not stabilised Exploit Interactive Exploit Interactive is a web magazine funded by the European Commission's Telematics For Libraries programme and published by UKOLN. http://www.exploit-lib.org/ As well as providing a dissemination channel for Telematics For Libraries projects, Exploit Interactive also acts as a test bed for UKOLN's research interests. Exploit Interactive is hosted on a Windows NT platform, and uses Microsoft SiteServer. An aim was to deliver innovative, standards-based services without significant software development. UKOLN is funded by Resource: The Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries, the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the Higher Education Funding Councils, as well as by project funding from the JISC’s Electronic Libraries Programme and the European Union. UKOLN also receives support from the University of Bath where it is based.

2. A Lightweight Approach To Support of Resource Discovery Standards • Architecture • Exploit Interactive makes use of ASP (Active Server Pages) to manage a set of SSIs (server-side includes) which pulls in navigational elements, article content, etc. ASP is also used to include metadata fragments and transform them into appropriate META tags, such as: <meta name="DC.Creator" content="Kelly, B"> <meta name="DC.Type" content="text.article.feature" scheme="exploit-categories"> Basic Searching Basic searching enables fielded searches to be carried out on the article author, title or abstract. Advanced Searching Advanced searching allows searches to be carried out within issues, article type or by the body which funded the project described in an article.

3. A Lightweight Approach To Support of Resource Discovery Standards • Use Of ASP To Manage The Metadata • ASP files are used to store navigational elements, article content, etc. They also store the metadata in a neutral format. Another ASP file is used to transform the metadata into HTML META elements. article_defaults.ssi (author, title, etc.) is stored with each article issue_defaults.ssi (publication date, etc.) is stored with each issue global_defaults.ssi (publisher, etc) is stored once <metaname="DC.Title"content="<%=doc_title%>"> <metaname="DC.Creator"content="<%=author%>"> <metaname="DC.Description"content="<%=description%>"> <metaname="DC.Relation.IsPartOf"content="<%=issue_id%>"> ... Include foo_defaults SSI fragments Transform to DC in HTML .. Include article default.asp • Creating And Using The Index • Microsoft SiteServer's indexing tool is used to create the index. • A simple script (about 70 lines of VBScript) is then used to process the search results. • A number of search interfaces areprovided including: • Windows Explorer type interfaceusing frames and JavaScript • Simple HTML interface using forms

4. A Lightweight Approach To Support of Resource Discovery Standards Exploit Interactive has demonstrated that Dublin Core metadata can be used to provide enhanced searching facilities using shrink-wrapped commercial software. The enhanced services available locally provide the motivation needed to justify the resources needed to create the metadata. • The use of the Dublin Core standard, rather than a home-grown system, will enable the metadata to be re-used by other applications. Conclusions Without an application, such as a local search facility, there is little motivation to provide metadata, or to monitor the quality of the metadata. Challenges Following the demonstration of support for Dublin Core in a Microsoft indexing package, a challenge for developers of other popular open source or licensed indexing software is to implement similar search services using Dublin Core metadata. For further information contact Brian Kelly, UK Web Focus, UKOLN, University of Bath. Email <b.kelly@ukoln.ac.uk>