Metadata initiatives and emerging technologies to improve resource discovery

This paper recognizes some emerging issues on metadata as a mechanism of resource discovery and its impact on precision of search results in a distributed network environment. It aims to present a brief account of the major metadata initiatives taken during the last couple of years, thus provide glimpses of recent activities on metadata across the globe. It also highlights a consistent growth of multiple metadata standards to meet the variety of needs in a hierarchy of complexity. The paper examines various metadata-harvesting tools and related technologies that fulfill the task implicit in a user’s search. Discussion brings out some popular standards, useful protocols, and open-source harvesters along with their intrinsic capabilities for harvesting and presenting metadata. It also emphasizes on a variety of metadata services viz., OCLC’s metalogue service, UKOLN metadata editor service, OAIster harvester service, DP9 gateway service, etc. that are predominantly used in different metadata communities. Attempt has been made to explore the underlying principles of metadata-harvesting in DSpace and web search engines. It also seems imperative to make a discussion on the use of multiple metadata formats in DSpace enabled archives for exposing domain-specific metadata; and subsequently evaluates the inherent mechanism for extensibility and interoperability functions. Thus it proposes various means of creating metadata in order to pursue high-precision document retrieval in dynamic collections. Finally it notices semantic web technologies that could bring a reasonable solution towards the integrated use of specialized metadata for long-term management and preservation of digital objects.