Web Guidelines - Metadata
Metadata is data about data. In terms of your Web pages it is additional descriptive information about the page. Typical information might include keywords, a description, author, date of update and other information. Including metadata in your Web pages can help you manage them and can help other people find them.
The Web templates developed for the March 2002 redesign include metadata for keywords, description and several Dublin Core metadata elements. Dublin Core is a standard collection of data elements to describe electronic resources.
Why should I bother with metadata?
This is a little like asking why the library should bother with a library catalog. Metadata can help other people find your pages. It can be used to relate pages of similar topics or authors. It can help you and others determine the freshness of your pages. While the tools used to gather and process the metadata are still being refined, you want your pages to take advantage of these tools as they become available.
How do I include metadata in my pages?
Use the <meta> tag within the <head> section of your document to include metadata. The keywords and description elements (see example below) are used by many search engines to help with indexing of pages and adjusting search results. For example, a page with accurate, descriptive metadata will be more likely to appear higher in a search results list.
<meta name="keywords" content="web standards, web guidelines, web publishing, metadata">
<meta name="description" content="What metadata is and how it can be implemented in web pages">
In additon to the keywords and description metadata elements we recommend including the Dublin Core elements shown below. These are a subset of an International Standard adopted by UT's General Libraries for their metadata repository.
<!-- Dublin Core Metadata (DC) --><!-- use organization name here -->
<meta name="DC.Creator" content="The University of Texas at Austin">
<!-- for the name of the resource assigned by the publisher -->
<meta name="DC.Title" content="Web Guidelines - Metadata">
<!-- topic of the resource, keywords and/or descriptive phrases -->
<meta name="DC.Subject" content="web publishing, style, guidelines">
<!-- a textual description (abstract) of the content of the page -->
<meta name="DC.Description" content="This page describes metadata guidelines for Web pages at The University of Texas at Austin">
<!-- name of agency responsible for making the resource available -->
<meta name="DC.Publisher" content="The University of Texas at Austin, Information Technology Services">
<!-- creation date of this page in YYYY-MM-DD format -->
<meta name="DC.Date" content="2002-07-25">
<!-- type of content, i.e., text, images, to assist someone's understanding of what kind of hardware/software would be required to serve this page -->
<meta name="DC.Type" content="text/html">
<!-- URL for page -->
<meta name="DC.Identifier" content="http://www.utexas.edu/web/guidelines/metadata.html">
<!-- language of the content -->
<meta name="DC.Language" content="English">
<!-- a link to publishers copyright statement if applicable -->
<meta name="DC.Rights" content="Copyright 2002, The University of Texas at Austin">
