Browsing Companion
An informal name for the notion of a Web browser add-on or component which provides user interface elements that expose metadata such as ratings, reviews, critiques, etc. to users as they browse and which may solicit ratings or annotations from the users in the same interface.
DSig
The DSig 1.0 is a W3C recommendation describing a method of utilising PICS 1.1 labels for making digitally-signed, machine-readable assertions about a particular information resource. Future work will extend DSig to other metadata formats such as XML and/or RDF. The RDF model inclusions an explicit notion of "statements" (or assertions) in anticipation of mechanisms for digitally signing blocks of RDF statements.
DutchESS
Dutch Electronic Subject Service.
EELS
Engineering Electronic Library in Sweden is a co-operative project of the Swedish University of Technology Libraries to provide an information system for quality assessed engineering resources on the Internet.
Harvester
An automated program for extracting and indexing the content of Web pages. The "Combine" Harvester developed under DESIRE phase one is currently being extended to support indexing of RDF metadata.
HTTP Proxy
An HTTP proxy acts as an interacting service between HTTP clients (Web browsers) and HTTP served Web sites. These proxies can cache pages for faster retrieval and may be well placed to provide additional metadata services, e.g. adding HTTP headers to reference related resources.
Java
An object oriented programming language and virtual machine developed by Sun Microsystems.
JavaScript
JavaScript is an interpreted programming or script language from Netscape that can be imbedded in HTML pages and interpreted by the Web browser.
Label Bureau
A server that distributes third party labels of Internet resources; as defined in the PICS 1.1 standard. Labels can refer to any characteristic of the content and can also be used to rate privacy policy, terms and conditions or intended audience, etc. It is likely that extensions to the Resource Description Framework will define a generalised successor to the PICS label bureau mechanism.
Metadata
Machine understandable information for the Web.
PICS
PICS is a W3C specification which enables labels (metadata) to be associated with Internet content.
Ratings Vocabulary
The term ‘vocabulary’ is broadly analogous to ‘lexicon’, ’dictionary’ or ‘language’. In the context of PICS and RDF, a vocabulary defines a set of categories, attributes (‘properties’) and legal values that can be used for making statements about Web resources. See also: Schema
Resource Description Framework (RDF)
Infrastructure that enables the encoding, exchange and reuse of structured metadata.
ROADS
Resource Organisation and Discovery in Subject Based Services - software and systems for setting up subject based information gateways.
RSAC
Recreational Software Advisory Council, a non-profit organisation that developed a content rating system designed to help parents supervise the content to which their children has access.
SafeSurf
SafeSurf is an independent organisation providing a voluntary Internet rating system for labelling Web pages.
Schema
In the context of PICS and RDF, a ‘schema’ provides a machine-readable definition for (one version of) a vocabulary or rating system.
SGML
Standard Generalized Mark-up Language is a generic mark-up language for representing documents.
SOSIG
Social Science Information Gateway. SOSIG is a subject gateway providing a selected catalogue to social science Internet resources.
Subject Gateway
Subject entrances (clearing houses) to quality assessed Internet resources.
W3C
International industry consortium, jointly hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Laboratory for Computer Science [MIT/LCS] in the United States; the Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique [INRIA] in Europe; and the Keio University Shonan Fujisawa Campus in Japan.
Warwick Framework
A container architecture for aggregating sets of metadata.
Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
W3C co-ordination activity to promote Web accessibility and usability through technology, guidelines, tools, education and outreach, and research and development.
XML
The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a data format for structured document interchange on the Web.