Subject: Re: Merge GILS
Carl Hage (carl@chage.com)
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 1998 11:02:37 -0800
Message-Id: <199802111956.NAA02417@rgate.ricochet.net> From: "Carl Hage" <carl@chage.com> To: gils@cni.org Date: Wed, 11 Feb 1998 11:02:37 -0800 Subject: Re: Merge GILS In-Reply-To: <34E1E1F9.319B@wln.com>
On Wed, 11 Feb 1998, Philip Coombs <pcoombs@wln.com> wrote:
>
> For those of us embedding the GILS attributes in the <HEAD> of HTML
> documents, use of technical and often cryptic attribute terms like
> "uncontrolled term" is counter-productive. First, the authors and
> Webmasters coding their documents haven't a clue what these are.
> Second, the major search engines ignore the value's increased
> importance in these unrecognized metatags.
A very important point. I believe it is crucial that HTML metadata be
backwards compatible with the existing conventions and tools, so that
it works with search engines to the greatest exent possible.
What is not appropriate is simply inserting MARC/Z39.50 tags as HTML
meta names.
> Why couldn't we call it "keywords"? ditto for subject-terms-controlled
> --> "subjects". ditto for abstract --> "description".
A subject term should be HTML encoded as something like:
<META name="Keywords" scheme="http://gils.gov/cv/NARA-OFR"
content="Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC)">
This will have the correct behavior from search engines.
A large number of GILS attributes should be encoded as Keywords, and
the scheme should indicate the semantics. For example, media type can
be encoded as a keyword so a general search engine matches "Video".
> As long as we have some license to modify our attribute set, can we
> jump on the opportunity to improve it?
I think the formal, technical names might be different than what
appears in a user interface. Also, the name used in the HTML world
might be different than the name backwards compatible with the
library world, e.g. abstract vs description.
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