The National Archives has prepared one consolidated document that sets out requirements for implementing AGLS metadata in Australian Government agencies. See the Australian Government Implementation Manual: AGLS Metadata.
These two documents are not the same and have different intentions.
The AGLS Manual for Users is no longer current. It has been superseded by the AGLS Metadata Element Set. The AGLS Metadata Element Set is version 1.3 of the AGLS Metadata Standard. This version was endorsed by Standards Australia in December 2002 and published as AS 5044.
The publication Australian Government Implementation Manual: AGLS Metadata is specifically aimed at helping Australian Government agencies implement AS 5044 to meet their obligations under Government Online: The Commonwealth Government's Online Strategy and Better Services, Better Government: The Federal Government's E‑Government Strategy.
Part Two of the AGLS Metadata Element Set (known as the Usage Guide) is intended for a much broader audience than just Australian Government agencies, and is therefore not as prescriptive. For Australian Government agencies, the Australian Government Implementation Manual takes precedence over the Usage Guide, and should be the document that is followed.
Appendix 1 of the Australian Government Implementation Manual: AGLS Metadata contains examples of how to describe resources using AGLS. All of these examples use HTML syntax and are good examples of how the tags should be written.
You can also look at metadata in the source code of other agencies’ web pages. To do this open the page in a web browser (eg Internet Explorer, Firefox etc) and click on 'Source' in the 'View' menu. This will open a new text window showing the HTML code.
Since AGLS metadata is aimed at improving public access to government resources, it is not necessary to apply AGLS metadata to resources on intranets or sites which are not generally available to the public. Of course, you can use AGLS for describing these resources and improving access for people who access your intranet or closed sites.
You can keep both sets of metadata, but it is useful to make sure that the AGLS metadata elements are clearly delineated from the other tags you use. One way of doing this is to place the generic tags before the AGLS tags and use the <LINK REL> tag at the start of the AGLS metadata (see question 6 below).
The <LINK> tag provides a way of associating an HTML page with other documents and resources. For AGLS the <LINK> tag allows metadata to be associated with the schema which defines the version of the metadata standard being used.
The schema for AGLS is developed and maintained by the National Archives of Australia so the <LINK> tag points to the location of the schema on the Archives website. The <LINK> tag must contain a hypertext reference (href) to the URL where the schema is located.
The REL part of the tag indicates the relationship of the HTML page to the resource referred to by the href. So the complete tag for AGLS looks like this: <LINK REL="AGLS Metadata Set Version 1.3 " href= "www.naa.gov.au/recordkeeping/gov_online/agls/1.3">
Although the <LINK REL> tag is not an integral part of the AGLS metadata standard, it is good HTML practice to use it in metadata records which are constructed according to a particular metadata standard. As well, it is a very good idea to use it in AGLS metadata records to indicate which version of the AGLS standard is being used for the metadata. The last part of the URL in the href above indicates the schema version. The latest version is 1.3, issued in December 2002.
The short answer is none at present. But we need to explain this concept as there are two ways of understanding the question.
First, in the same way that a search engine goes out and indexes words from a web page it can, at the same time, pick up any metadata that is attached to that web page. As such, when a user undertakes a search and types in a word that conforms to a term in a metadata record, this record will also be picked up.
Alternatively, if a commercial search engine fully supports a metadata search, then it would be able to search for terms within a specific element ie ‘look in DC.Title for any occurrence of the word ... ’ This would have the effect of only searching in records that had a DC.Title field as opposed to every page in the index.
In regard to search engine support for searching the text in metadata fields, all search engines could allow this capability, but few of them do.
To support the ability to limit a search to specific metadata fields, the search engine has to be configured to support metadata searching. Search engines known to have provided this capability include Verity, Fulcrum and HotMeta.
First, you register your website by emailing your URL to the relevant search engine. Each search website provides information on how to register your URL with them.
The generic meta tags ‘keywords’ and ‘description’ are indexed by commercial search engines. Placing these tags in your HTML pages will help people to find your web pages when searching through commercial search engine sites.
AGLS metadata is primarily intended to be harvested by government search engines and entry points and is not specifically directed at resource discovery through the large commercial search engines.
This would be useful as it establishes the business process to create, maintain and manage metadata on your site. It would be worthwhile to include those elements of the AGLS standard that you see as mandatory from your organisation’s perspective and any rules for their use including the use of functional or subject-based thesauruses.
Such documentation would also be useful for resource creators in understanding their information management responsibilities.
No, there is no template or standard for this. It would be worthwhile contacting other web managers to see if they have similar documentation.
The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) does list a number of tools and templates that may help in the development of a specific template for your organisation (see dublincore.org/tools for details).
A metadata editor gives full control to the operator for creating metadata. Most editors provide prompts for the insertion of variable data, and the editor builds any syntax (the metadata coding) around the content to ensure conformance with the standard.
A metadata generator on the other hand, is a higher level application that applies logic to the resources that require metadata. The generator automatically populates a range of the metadata elements by a processing method that looks for existing meta tags (for such elements as title, description, date etc) or other predefined components of a resource (first 4 lines of a paragraph, say). An example of this type of application is the Klarity tool used for metatagging of Business Entry Point metadata. In most instances, the user will still need to view the metadata created, assess the generated metadata to ensure accuracy and quality and to fill in any gaps.
You can write ‘raw’ HTML, however you will need to ensure the correct syntax is used with each metadata element. A template can be created in Word or Excel where the variable data can be inserted. This will speed up the process of applying metadata to resources and ensure consistency.
Alternatively you can use a text editor.
The National Archives does not recommend that agencies write ‘raw’ HTML since metadata authoring tools are able to generate correct syntax much more quickly and efficiently than humans.
A range of metadata editors and generators is available. Some are commercial products and others are available free of charge to government agencies based on their requirements. Some tools are included as part of content management systems.
For details on other metadata tools, contact the Agency Service Centre via webform or by phone on (02) 6212 3610.
The current AGLS Metadata Element Set consists of the following 19 elements:
| Element | Obligation | Element | Obligation | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Creator* | Mandatory | Audience | Conditional | |
| Date* | Mandatory | Coverage | Conditional | |
| Description | Mandatory | Language | Conditional | |
| Title* | Mandatory | Contributor | Optional | |
| Type | Mandatory | Format | Optional | |
| Function* OR Subject* | Mandatory | Mandate | Optional | |
| Identifier* OR Availability* | Mandatory | Relation | Optional | |
| Publisher | Conditional | Rights | Optional | |
| Source | Optional |
You do not have to use the full set of elements for describing resources. You must use at least the five mandatory elements (marked above in bold and with an asterisk*) to create metadata compliant with the Australian Standard AS 5044.
However, Australian Government agencies are required to use additional elements to meet their E-Government Strategy obligations. For Australian Government agencies, Type and Description are mandatory and Publisher, Audience, Coverage and Language are also mandatory depending on the resource’s content. In addition, Function must be used for description of collection level resources and services.
The National Archives has published the Australian Government Implementation Manual: AGLS Metatdata which describes how to use AGLS metadata.
There is no order to the tags. The order of the tags does not matter, except that if you use a <LINK REL> tag it must appear before any of the other tags in the AGLS set.
It is useful to try to have consistency across a website, so it would be a good idea to keep to the same tag order for all metadata on a website. Neither the DC or AGLS tags have to appear in any specific place within the metadata record, so it does not matter if the AGLS tags come after or before the DC tags, or interspersed among the DC tags.
A metadata ‘element’ is one of the 19 individual components of the AGLS Metadata Element Set. Each of the ‘elements’ (or components of the set) describes a specific aspect of the resource identified by the name of the element. A metadata ‘tag’, on the other hand, is the actual element and its value, and qualifiers if used, written out in a specific type of syntax. For example, Creator is one of the metadata elements. <META NAME="DC.Creator" CONTENT="National Archives of Australia"> is an HTML metadata tag using the Creator element.
A ‘collection-level’ resource is a resource on an agency website that gives access to other resources dealing with a particular topic, or project, or which are of a specific type. Some examples of collection-level resources are an agency homepage, an entry page for individual media releases, and any web page which is the top level of a specific sub-directory within your agency website. A number of the resource types listed in Annex B: AGLS Metadata Obligations of Government Online are collection-level resources.
The definition is somewhat flexible, but in practical terms it is usually clear which resources are ‘collection-level’ resources and which are not.
The Date element has the following refinements:
The National Archives is willing to add other refinements to the Date element if there is sufficient support for this from agencies implementing AGLS.
Tag content, generally, must only reflect the resource being described, so inheritance of values from higher to lower level resources is not recommended. Some values will be common to all resources of a given agency (eg Creator, Publisher, Rights), but generally tag content is specific to the actual resource being described. With collection-level resources there is scope for describing in general terms the other resources which make up the collection.
The set of tags you use depends to some extent on the resource being described, so it is difficult to be prescriptive about which elements are appropriate for which pages. Australian Government agencies must create at least the mandatory seven elements, as described in the Australian Government Implementation Manual: AGLS Metadata.
While there is no theoretical limit (apart from limits imposed by hardware and software) to the amount of content you can put in any one tag, it is poor practice to overload metadata records with content. The aim of any metadata standard (not just AGLS) is to describe resources in as concise and accurate a manner as possible. You should try to keep tag content to the minimum needed to describe a resource.
No. While collection-level metadata can describe lower level resources in general terms, it is important to remember that you are describing the resource being described, not all of the resources that might be linked or related to the resource being described. It is not appropriate to carry the same metadata across different resources, particularly from collection to item-level resources. Of course, some of the elements (eg Creator), will contain the same value in every page, but most element values will be specific to the actual resource being described in the metadata. Collection-level metadata should be relevant only to the collection being described; so higher level collection metadata is not appropriate for lower level collections.
No. In fact describing every single resource on a website is not the intention of Government Online or AGLS implementation. The only resources which must be described are those which meet an agency’s metadata obligations under Government Online – see Annex B: AGLS Metadata Obligations. Often, this will amount to no more than 10% of an agency’s website.
Search results themselves do not have to have attached AGLS metadata. However, websites which dynamically generate web pages (an increasingly common situation in government agencies) are not exempt from the Better Services, Better Government metadata obligations just because the pages are dynamically generated. If the system you use to dynamically generate web pages does not allow the creation of metadata for resources and the association of the metadata with the appropriate resources, then you should not use that particular system, since your agency will be unable to meet its obligations under Better Services, Better Government.
You need to update the metadata for a resource every time the content of the resource itself or any of the contextual information changes (eg a change of URL, a change of agency name etc).
You cannot put more than one URL in a single tag, but if you believe it is necessary to list each URL then you can repeat the Identifier element as many times as you need to account for all the URLs which point to that page.
Except that the element name (with its qualifier, if used) must appear first in the tag, the order of other qualifiers within the tag does not matter, although it is usual in HTML to put content (the value) last. Note that you do not use lang and scheme in the same tag and it is not necessary to use the "lang" attribute of the metadata if it is in English.
In HTML case is not significant, so scheme="x" is the same as SCHEME="X", or scheme="X", or SCHEME="x". In XML/RDF case is significant and it does matter which case is used. For XML/RDF it is important to use case in the way described in the documents available from the Dublin Core website.
Not if you are using RFC 1766 as the scheme. However, use of this scheme is not mandatory so ‘English’ is an acceptable value if you do not want to use a scheme.
Yes, although the separator should be a dash (eg en-au, and en-gb, en-us).
It is quite correct to use a URL, instead of text, as the value for the Rights element. You can use <META NAME="DC.Rights CONTENT="Copyright Commonwealth of Australia 2000"> or <META NAME="DC.Rights CONTENT="www.naa.gov.au/copyright.html">
You should only delete metadata that does not serve a useful purpose. If you have created metadata for other requirements (eg metadata to support EdNA indexing), this should be retained. The generic meta tags (see question 5) should also be retained if you want to make sure that your agency website is discoverable through the large commercial search engines.
You need to look at the role of your intranet in relation to your whole recordkeeping policy, and digital recordkeeping in particular.
The National Archives will be able to advise you if the AGLS metadata standard would be suitable for your needs. If you decide to make your intranet part of your digital recordkeeping system, then you should start with the Recordkeeping Metadata Standard for Commonwealth Agencies.
All the AGLS metadata elements, including the DC.Format element, are repeatable. This means that in the metadata for an ‘entry’ page for the particular online resource being described, you can repeat the DC.Format element for each different format in which the resource is provided.
So for a page from which you have links to HTML, PDF and RTF versions of the same resource, you should include something like this in the metadata:
<META NAME="DC.Format" SCHEME="IMT" CONTENT="text/html">
<META NAME="DC.Format" SCHEME="IMT" CONTENT="application/pdf">
<META NAME="DC.Format" SCHEME="IMT" CONTENT="application/rtf">
The introduction of the Australian Government Design (‘branding’) in June 2003 affected the description of some AGLS metadata. Where ‘Commonwealth Government’ or ‘Federal Government’ has been used, it should be replaced with ‘Australian Government’. The exception to this is when referring to the legal entity ‘Commonwealth of Australia’ which shall remain unchanged.
The AGLS elements affected are Creator, Contributor and Publisher. Encoding schemes affected are GOLD, AglsAgent and AglsAvail.
If using GOLD (or any X500 scheme) to describe Creator, Contributor or Publisher, organisationName (o=) would become ‘Australian Government’ while the organisationalUnitNames (ou=) are not affected. If using AglsAgent to describe Creator, Contributor or Publisher, the entry corporateName would be ‘Australian Department of …’.
<META NAME="DC.Creator" SCHEME="GOLD"
CONTENT="c=au;o=Australian Government;ou= Australian Government Department of Information Technology and the Arts;ou=National Archives of Australia"><META NAME=DC.Creator" SCHEME="AglsAgent"
CONTENT="corporateName=Australian Government Attorney General's Department;jurisdiction=Commonwealth of Australia;contact=Native Title Division, Robert Garran Offices, National Circuit, Barton ACT 2600, phone: 6250 5540">
The value of any jurisdiction element remains 'Commonwealth of Australia' or 'Australia'. AGLS elements that use jurisdiction are Rights, Coverage and Availability.
<META NAME="AGLS.Availability" SCHEME="AglsAvail"
CONTENT="corporateName=National Archives of Australia;email=agls@naa.gov.au;jurisdiction=Commonwealth of Australia">
There are a number of online resources which can assist you to evaluate the metadata attached to your webpages. In particular, the Australian Government Implementation Manual: AGLS Metadata provides information on evaluating AGLS metadata. Table 1 in section 3.1 provides information about the obligation to use particular AGLS elements in the Australian Government, while section 6.1 provides a set of criteria you can use to evaluate whether or not your metadata is compliant with the AGLS standard.
There are a number of manuals available from the National Archives website to assist implementation of AGLS. These are updated as required. You can also contact the National Archives through the Agency Service Centre via our online form or by phone on (02) 6212 3610. The Webmanagers Forum run by DOFA is also a good place to ask questions about metadata and implementation issues.
The National Archives is happy to assist agencies with AGLS implementation. You can contact the National Archives through the Agency Service Centre via our online form.
There is no discussion list at present. One source of information is the Content Management Community of Practice.
The Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) maintains a list of best practice sites.
You can also contact the National Archives through the Agency Service Centre to receive a list of compliant sites.