An Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Current Dublin Core Metadata for Retrieval

Presents the results of a study into the effectiveness of Dublin Core metadata for retrieval. The metadata from twenty Australian government and educational organisations was analysed. The metadata was assessed for its capacity to facilitate title, creator/publisher, and subject access. From the results, it emerged that title metadata added little value, that creator/publisher access was flawed by inconsistent name formats, and that the subject terms used were too broad to produce increased precision and decreased recall. Specific suggestions are made as to how metadata creation in these three areas can be improved, and the relationship of Dublin Core to information foraging theory is explored.