Web indexing with meta fields: A survey of web objects in polymer chemistry

Four Web search engines - AltaVista, Lycos, Excite, and Webcrawler - were used to collect data on Web objects in polymer chemistry. One thousand thirty-seven Web objects were examined for data in four categories: document information, use of meta fields, use of images, and use of chemical names. Issues raised include whether to provide metadata elements for parts of entities or whole entities only, the use of meta syntax, problems in representation of special types of objects, and whether links should be considered when encoding metadata. Use of meta fields was not widespread in the sample, and knowledge of meta fields in HTML varied greatly among Web object creators. This article is part of the result from the metadata project funded by OCLC Library and Information Science Research Grant Program.