Dublin Core Metadata

Is it relevant at all?

[Krapulator]

I am currently working on a development proposal for an Australian Government Department and one of the requirements specified in the tender is the use of Dublin Core Metadata across the entire site.

I have not had any experience in using DC metadata at all (and I was under the impression that it was some kind of failed experiment that no one was really using now).

Is it useful for anything at all? Does anyone have any real world examples of where it being used to improve the indexing of web documents? Does anyone religiously apply it to sites that they develop?

Thanks in advance.

[encyclo]

I don't think that the DC creators think of it as a failed experiment, but in terms of public search engines it has no relevance as it is open to abuse: metadata as added by the site owner is often inaccurate, incomplete or misleading, so (like for the meta keywords tag) it can never be taken too seriously as a guide to the page contents.

Where such metadata can shine is in a more controlled environment where usage is more prevalent and the risk of being misled is much reduced. So you see a lot of use of the standardized Dublin Core metadata for intranets, for example. In your case, as all the government sites would be using the metadata, most probably correctly, it could be used by a search appliance restricted to indexing those sites, for example for a government portal which guides users to specific government sites and services.