Structured Metadata for Direct Resource Location: A Case Study

This paper proposes that for scientific and technical information resources, a well-structured and high-quality metadata record contains enough information to find that resource on the Internet, and as a consequence, no additional human labour is needed to create or maintain any links. Research was performed by creating a control group of records from the Online Catalogue of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and searching them in various ways in Google and Metacrawler. Based on results, this method was revised and used on the larger AGRIS database. Results showed not only that the method is successful; it is also highly useful for searching citations. A user interface is suggested, and changes to current cataloguing rules are discussed.