Best Practices 
Table of Contents
PDF documents

Introduction and Overview

State of MN Web Metadata Standard

Minnesota Metadata Guidelines Training Manual

Bibliographies

Appendices

Contact Us

The capstone of the Foundations Project is the best practices document, which brings together practical guides as well as background documentation and data that support the recommendations and standards which have made the project so successful. The Foundations Project has developed information architecture that has improved public access to environmental information within Minnesota State agencies. This information architecture has greatly enhanced Internet search and retrieval accuracy. The Minnesota Metadata Guidelines for Dubin Core Metadata (MMG-DC) is the basis of the best practices and includes the following: 15 qualified metatag elements known as the Dublin Core, a thesaurus, search engine and the processes for incorporation of metadata into electronic resources. 

With the support of the State of Minnesota's Office of Technology, these Best Practices are recommended for web pages on all Minnesota State agency sites, not only the agencies involved in the Foundations Project. As the collection of electronic documents on Minnesota Agency Internets and Intranets grows, metadata has proven to be a powerful tool to find useful information. Placed in Web pages, metadata will allow information to be found more easily and accurately. It also can be used for records management and archiving. Metadata helps search accuracy on commercial search engines, too. Finally, consistent best practices allows a standardized approach to electronic document cataloging, retrieval or archiving. 

The practical guide, Minnesota Metadata Guidelines Training Manual, contains invaluable information on the application of Dublin Core metadata elements and use of the controlled vocabulary in the subject/keyword metadata tag. Considerable research and studies are summarized in the Bibliographies, Usability Studies on Dublin Core as well as Bridges Search Interface, and Background Reports. Feel free to download the pdf files that interest you. For further information or training, please contact Eileen Quam.