Collection & Item Level Metadata:

Making Sense of Federated Search Websites

By Paul R Butler

Federated Search Websites

Are websites that allow the searching of diverse “deep web” content, such as databases, and aggregates the results to be viewed at one location.

While not new, becoming more popular because of increased ease of aggregation due to adoption of metadata standards (CDWA, Dublin Core, VRA Core 4.0) and sharing protocols (OAI-PMH, Z39.50, OpenSearch).

Examples of Federated Search

• NZMuseums• The National Library of Australia’s

Federated Search Project• Collections Australia Network• Open History

So what is the problem?

Federated search websites add an extra layer of intellectual complexity to website design. Without explicitly knowledging this complex intellectual structure and representing it through explicit design choices you are bound to confuse the user.

Collections vs. Items

While traditional websites generally give you one dimensional results, a book or an image, federated search websites give you a second dimension – the collection. So not only are you given the book or image, you are also given metadata about the repository, website, or database the book or image comes from….

Collections vs. Items (cont’d)

…and to complicate the matter more, you can browse and search collection level metadata as well as item level metadata, and often both are displayed at the same time…

Collections vs. Items (cont’d)

…and while designers can easily make sense of one dimensional information (they have been doing it for years) they are not as well versed in designing websites to display browse and search results for multidimensional information.

A Way Forward…

As a means to model the intellectual structure of their relationship, I suggest we think of collections and items as binary opposites - mutually exclusive sets of metadata. When dealing with both collection and item level metadata, I suggest you explicitly set them apart from each other in some manner - visually, spatially, and/or temporally.

Things To Keep In Mind…• Collection and item metadata should be

thought of as mutually exclusive, though prepare for them to be viewed simultaneously.

• Think of ways to explicitly represent collections and items and their intellectual structure - though colors, layout differences, labeling.

• Changes to an existing site can be relatively minimal.

• Finally, to some degree this is just an old fashion website redesign.

Opening History Homepage (Old)

Opening History Homepage (New)

Collection Browse (Old)

Collection Browse (New)

Item Search (Old)

Item Search (New)

Conclusion - meta-meta?

• Does not require radical changes

• Does not require major investment, but can produce returns

• Be consistent

• Use different techniques

• Tell them early, tell them often