Creating a Metadata-Enabled Framework for Resource Discovery in Knowledge Bases

With the proliferation of digitized resources accessible via Internet and Intranet knowledge bases, and a pressing need to develop more sophisticated tools for the identification and retrieval of electronic resources, both general purpose and domain-specific metadata schemes have assumed a particular prominence. While recent work emanating from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has focused on the Resource Description Framework (RDF), and metadata maps or Acrosswalks ” have been created to support the interoperability of metadata standards-- thus converting metatags from diverse domains from simply “ machine-readable ” to “ machine-understandable ”-- the next iteration, to “ human-understandable, ” remains a challenge. This apparent gap provides a framework for three-phase research (Howarth, 2000, 1999) to develop a tool which will provide a “ human-understandable ” front-end search assist to any XML-compliant metadata scheme. Findings from phase one, the analyses and mapping of seven metadata schemes, identify the particular challenges o