The Defence Imagery and Geospatial Organisation (DIGO) displays the AGLS logo on this web site in recognition of its compliance with the Australian Government Locator Service guidelines for Government web site metadata.
What is the AGLS?
The Australian Government Locator Service is the organisation developing the Australian Standard for metadata for Australian Government documents, resources, agencies, services, collections and databases. The new metadata will improve the visibility and accessibility of services and information over the internet.
What are metadata?
Metadata are sets of elements that describe a resource. In the case of the DIGO web site, the metadata are a set of tags embeded in the HTML code of the document that define particular pieces of information presented on each page. For example, there are separate metadata tags that list details of the author, date, title and the subject matter. Whilst some of this information may be evident to the user upon viewing the page, the meta data provides a more structured approach for use by Australian Government search engines. This DIGO site therefore differs from most others 'behind the scenes' - the content is defined by the use of metadata derived from various web-based thesuaruses.
Due to the sheer volume of information that now exists electronically in the world today, the presentation, structure and definition of metadata is seen as a vital step in our ability to make this information usable and manageable.
More information on the AGLS
The lead agency for the development and deployment of the AGLS is the National Archives of Australia. However, the initiative is a cooperative venture between the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) and the Online Council Officials.
The AGLS metadata standards are based upon the leading international online resource discovery metadata standard, the Dublin Core standard, (Australian Mirror Site), developed in 1997/98.
