Networked information discovery and retrieval for educational materials onthe Internet: Metadata development, deployment, and evolution

This paper describes the Gateway to Educational Materials Project (GEM) at the EPIC Clearinghouse on Information & Technology at Syracuse University. Under the auspices of the U.S. National Library of Education and the U.S. D epartment of Education, the Clearinghouse is spearheading a project to deve lop a metadata element set for describing all educational resources on the Internet. Using the Dublin Core as its base referent, the GEM Project team developed an extended element set appropriate to the domain. Metadata is cr eated using the current syntax for HTML 4.0. Future implementations will us e RDF/XML. GEM also provides well-specified practices for the application o f the GEM element set and profile. The paper first explicates the GEM metad ata element set and how GEM metadata is created. It then discusses the synt actic binding of GEM metadata and the mechanisms for its distribution. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of existing and future interfaces t o GEM.