The Power of Metadata, or Why You Get So Many Hits on Web Search Engines

• What differentiates library catalog searching compared with web searching?

• Library catalogs:

  • well-structured information
  • commonly understood access points
  • can express a search for Twain as “author” or Twain as “subject

• Web search engines:

  • unstructured information
  • no common access points, just keyword searching
  • can’t ask for books by Twain versus books about Twain

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