Visibility of metadata and Dublin Core elements on the website of National Archives of the International Council on Archives

Goal: Investigates visibility of HTML elements and Dublin Core metadata elements on the website of the National Archives of the International Council on Archives.Method/Research Approach: Data collection and analysis, Sources of 49 members of the National Archives Homepage were viewed using Internet Explorer. HTML elements and Dublin Core elements were extracted and entered in the check list. Descriptive statistics was used for analysis. Only 6 elements of all Doblin Core elements were observed in the retrieved websites. Author elements had most frequency (4). With regard to visibility of HTML elements, Iran and UAE national archives website respectively had highest number of elements. Among elements used in the websites, type, content, description and keyword with frequency 43, 28, and 26 were used. Approaches adopted by web designers examined using table of Dublin Core and HTML elements. Results showed that description of content was first in rank and legal ownership source and physical appearance stood next. Frequency of presence of Dublin Core elements in websites in comparison with HTML elements is very low. One reason can be complex nature of these elements. Examining designer's approach showed that their focus is on the enrichment of content rather than on the other two aspects.