It is well known that selectivity leaves a lot to be desired of various types, sound and voice recordings, images, in searching for information resources on the Internet video clips, and scientific data. Also, private information with existing search systems (Desai, 1995c). This has services such as price lists and quotations, databases of prompted a number of researchers to turn their attention products and services, and speciality newsletters are availto the development and implementation of models for able. There is also a number of projects underway in indexing and searching information resources on the Internet. In this article, 1 we examine briefly the results of agencies, such as the Library of Congress and universities, a simple query on a number of existing search systems to digitize legacy sources. The information being digitized and then discuss two proposed index metadata strucis not only text but also audio, graphics, image, and video tures for indexing and supporting search and discovery:
(movies). This digitized information forms the collection
The Dublin Core Elements List and the Semantic Header.
of the so-called digital or virtual libraries (Lesk, 1994).
We also present an indexing and discovery system based on the Semantic Header. Internet-based information system (e.g., Global Network Berners-Lee, 1993) in particular. This is now becoming Academy Meta-Library, Infoseek, Lycos, OpenText, the accepted method of disseminating and sharing infor-WebCrawler, World Wide Web Catalog, World Wide mation resources in hypermedia. Currently, a number of Web Worm, Yahoo). Recent tests of these services by the information sources, both public (free) and private (availauthor found the problem of mis-hits and misses (Desai, able for a fee), are available on the Internet. They include: 1995c). A naive user may conclude erroneously about Text, computer programs, books, electronic journals, the availability of information from such search results. newspapers, organizational local and national directories Other problems with the existing indices are: Their fragmented nature, their incomplete coverage, and their incompatibility. The user has to thus be aware of these 1 A preliminary version of this article was prepared as a white paper for the CIC Forum: America in the Age of Information, Bethesda, MD, systems and try them to locate the required information.