scope:

Introduction

A sub group of the Metasearch Initiative Search and Retrieval Task Group was assigned the responsibility of identifying a core set of metadata that provide information about a result set at both the aggregate level (see Aggregate tab in this workbook) and the individual record (see Inidvidual tab in this workbook). These data elements are intended to be used by content providers to provide better quality of information returned through a variety of methods. It may also used to ensure that the needs of metasearch products are met by a given protocol.

The group used the following assumptions in developing the recommended metadata elements:

1 The elements in this document apply to metadata related to the results of a search. Specifically excluded is information about the query interpretation (subquery: recommendation) and elements specific to a response (e.g. RetMax and RetStart).

2 Result set metadata is nested. So many of the data elements can be reused in the context of a specific database. Elements such as "results by database: count" can be handled through "record count" in a nested structure.

3 It is recognized that there may be value to providing result set level defaults for particular elements (e.g. schema id); however this document does not address that particular issues. That is left to a particular protocol to define those elements.