- RDF and Dublin Core are standards in describing content and helping to create The Semantic Web (see earlier post).
- Webpages and digital assets (like documents, images, Emails ..) can carry metadata in this format.
- These metadata are inserted by hand (human work) or extracted by software tools (RDFizers). So large databases with RDFized assets become available. A list of RDF stores on the publicly available web can be found here (rdfdata.org).
- Finally specialized tools (like FRESNEL) help define which metadata or better: which parts of the RDF code should be selected for presentation in a specialized Web browser (for instance Longwell) . Such specalized browsers allow faceted browsing where the data can be filtered according to the selected metadata.
Looking at the RDFized MIT libraries gives a good visual explanation.
On the right hand is a list of facets (the RDF categories selected to be presented, see above) that can be selected. According to theses selections the data are filtered. A very powerful retrieval of information.
If the assets carry dates the data may also be presented as a timeline.
The MIT project SIMILE is based on this kind of technology and gives some more examples.