Metadata – Has The Time Arrived? [A7]

Abstract

An important role of the institutional web site is to attract new students. Political changes together with the growth of the Internet is resulting in increasing competition for students – we can no longer rely on 18 year-olds automatically attending a UK University. The UK HE Mall aims to provide an entry point to UK Universities for potential students. It will help students choose not just the right university but also help in choosing the right course.

The HE Mall will require more than a simple HTML page with links to UK University web sites. It is likely that the Mall will make use of metadata to provide rich and effective browsing and searching capabilities.

Institutions will also gain benefits from the provision of metadata on their web sites, as this will enable more effective local searching, browsing and management services to be provided.

This session will provide an opportunity to find out more about the HE Mall and to discuss the implications for institutional web managers.

Session Aims:

The aims of the session are:

  • To enable participants to find out more about the HE Mall.
  • To enable participants to identify the benefits of the HE Mall to their organisations.
  • To consider the tools needed to manage metadata on institutional web sites.
  • To explore how issues relevant to the HE Mall may also be relevant to Institutional web sites.

Participants involved in organising the session are Brian Kelly, Chris Harris and Alan Robiette.