These experiments have uncovered the following challenges. It is difficult to confine a search to relevant materials, incorporate sites that already have indexed materials, and index sites that store materials using database systems that generate URLs on the fly. In addition to using Netscape software, collaborations with commercial search engine companies like Yahoo and Excite are being considered as routes to establish a search engine prototype. As this web-based discovery system is developed, materials from additional university sites will be incorporated to complement existing geoscience sources. A description, or metadata, for each multimedia element needs to be provided.
Users can then display the media element or save it to their computer.
Iowa State's index searches their own web pages and generates web pages on the fly. To develop true metadata for multimedia elements more is needed than just keywords. Metadata is information about data and can include a description, the size, file format, the creation date, copyright information, and the data coverage, spatially and temporally, about a multimedia element. The inclusion of metadata with the multimedia materials would give the geoscience and education communities greater access and control in finding information. Since Educause's National Learning Infrastructure Initiative is attempting to develop metadata conventions for the scientific disciplines, this project could influence these conventions as well as follow them.