Conceptual design and deployment of a metadata framework for educational resources on the Internet

The metadata framework described in this article stems from a growing conce rn of the U.S. Department of Education and its National Library of Educatio n that teachers, students, and parents are encountering increasing difficul ty in accessing educational resources on the Internet even as those resourc es are becoming more abundant. This concern is joined by the realization th at as the internet matures as a publishing environment, the successful mana gement of resource repositories will hinge to a great extent on the intelli gent use of metadata. We first explicate the conceptual foundations for the Gateway to Educational Materials (GEM) framework including the adoption of the Dublin Core Element Set as its base referent, and the extension of tha t set to meet the needs of the domain. We then discuss the complex of decis ions that must be made regarding selection of the units of description and the structuring of an information space. The article concludes with a discu ssion of metadata generation, the association of metadata to the objects de scribed, and a general description of the GEM system architecture.