Metadata Effectiveness in Internet Discovery: An Analysis of Digital Collection Metadata Elements and Internet Search Engine Keywords

Abstract

This study analyzed digital item metadata and keywords from Internet search engines to learn what metadata elements actually facilitate discovery of digital collections through Internet keyword searching and how significantly each metadata element affects the discovery of items in a digital repository. The study found that keywords from Internet search engines matched values in eight metadata elements and resulted in landing visits to the digital repository. Findings of the study indicate that three specific metadata elements are effective in enhancing discoverability of digital collections through Internet search engines, including Dublin Core metadata elements Title, Description, and Subject. n recent decades, the rapid increase in the number of digital repositories has called for in-depth research on metadata quality evaluations. As Ann Windnagel claimed, the success of a digital repository depends largely on the quality of its metadata. 1 Discussions about metadata evaluation and evaluation criteria have lasted for more than a decade. Relevant issues including metadata definition, primary purpose, and functionality perspectives have all been examined. Although several evaluation standards of metadata quality exist, there is no one answer to the question of how to evaluate metadata quality. 2 In the literature, discoverability issues are the focus receiving the most impact in several metadata evaluation standards. As items are put into digital repositories instead of the catalog, they move out of the controlled environment of the library. The metadata records, instead of just having to work within a system search, also have to be effective for external indexing by search engines in order to be found. Challenges of deploying metadata to the Internet to facilitate information discovery and retrieval have persisted for nearly twenty years; however, few studies have been conducted to test the effectiveness of metadata on online resource discovery by search engines. No relevant studies on metadata effectiveness between digital collections and search engines are found in the current literature.This article aims to examine the implemented metadata of a digital collection and to evaluate the metadata effectiveness on digital resource discovery by Internet search

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