Quinkan Matchbox
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What is the Quinkan Matchbox?

This is one product of a research project funded and supported by the Australian Research Council SPIRT Program, the Ang-Gnarra Corporation, Motile Research Pty Ltd, James Cook University and La Trobe University.

What is a metadata search? Why is it different from a Google search?

Matchbox is a digital repository and content rendering system that operates on catalogue-like records of digital items.
Why search using metadata? Why use a catalogue? Why not just use Google?
Searching for something that you want to find is slightly different from searching to find out about something. If you want to find out about something, the best you can do these days is find what is available, and look at it. This is obvious but let's pretend we want to find out about the Laura Dance Festival.

First, we'd search Google saying we want "Laura dance festival" and hope for the best.

We'd think we'd done well when we see the result:

Web  
Results 1-50 of about 735 for "laura dance "festival . ( 0.52 seconds) 

but when we look a little closer, we are going to ask which ones should we look at? How do we know if the good ones come first? How do we know if they talk about what is of interest to us? How do we know if they have any pictures.

So next we might do a search on Google for images using the same words, "Laura dance festival" and this time the result will be slightly different.

Image
Results 1-50 of about 76 for "laura dance festival" . ( 0.10 seconds) 

The actual results are also different - some images come from sites already discovered but there are images on sites that were not listed in the 'images' search and there were lots of irrelevant images in the 'image' search results - not as many as before but still we have no idea of the quality of the sites.

Comparison of Google Web vs Google Images search results.

Web search results

Image search results

CYPDA - Events - Laura Dance Festival 2003 Laura Aboriginal Dance and Cultural Festival. Laura Dance Festival | Rodeos | Events. The fifthteenth Laura Aboriginal Dance ... www.cypda.com.au/events/laura.htm - 7k - Cached - Similar pages Community Information Service - Community Reference Files Laura Dance Festival. Location and Contacts, Events. No physical address supplied Description: Edit Record, Add Record, Record Updated: 19/11/1999 by Walter. cairns.cisci.org.au/shr-cgi-bin/Jon/ crf.exe?CMD=SHOW+RECORD&RECORD+NUMBER=856%20TARGET= - 3k - Cached - Similar pages Laura Dance & Cultural Festival ... The Laura Dance and Cultural Festival is primarily a community event but has also become a focus for reconciliation between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal ... www.ozoutback.com.au/postcards/ postcards_forms/qld_laurafestival_1/ - 8k - Cached - Similar pages Laura Dance & Cultural Festival OzOutback. Photos from the Real AUSTRALIA. Photos . this . page. Queensland. The Laura Dance and Cultural Festival in North Queensland. ... www.ozoutback.com.au/postcards/ postcards_forms/qld_laurafestival_2/ - 8k - Cached - Similar pages [ More results from www.ozoutback.com.au ] The Laura Dance and Cultural Festival The 15th Laura Dance and Cultural Festival kicks off over the weekend of June 20-22 2003. Australian ... The Laura Dance and Cultural Festival. Published ... www.abc.net.au/message/blackarts/culture/s876121.htm - 21k - Cached - Similar pages Mary G & The Laura Festival ... And we go the recent Laura Dance and Cultural Festival on the other side of the country, 300-kilometres north of Cairns, to hear about a new book called ... www.abc.net.au/message/radio/awaye/stories/s906453.htm - 22k - Cached - Similar pages [ More results from www.abc.net.au ] Canku Ota - Apr. 7, 2001 - Laura Dance and Cultural Festival ... april 7, 2001 - Issue 33. Laura Dance and Cultural Festival. ... The Ang-gnarra Aboriginal Corporation host the Laura Dance and Cultural Festival. ... www.turtletrack.org/Issues01/ Co04072001/CO_04072001_Laura.htm - 11k - Cached - Similar pages Pandora Archive : Laura Dance and Cultural Festival : June 22-24 ... ... HOME. Laura Dance and Cultural Festival : June 22-24 2001 : Reconciliation 2001. Search PANDORA for: Advanced Search| Search Help. ... pandora.nla.gov.au/tep/21325 - 6k - Cached - Similar pages Cairns Regional Gallery - Cairns Regional Gallery's Banner ... 18 June 2001. Cairns Regional Gallery's Banner Competition for Laura Dance and Cultural Festival. In conjunction with the 2001 Laura ... www.cairnsregionalgallery.com.au/ ianpasin/release_23.htm - 16k - Cached - Similar pages Cairns Regional Gallery - The Cape York Art Awards ... The winning entries from the 2001 Cape York Art Awards, featured at the recent Laura Dance and Cultural Festival, are now on show at Cairns Regional Gallery. ... www.cairnsregionalgallery.com.au/ ianpasin/release_29.htm - 19k - Cached - Similar pages Laura Dance Festival Home. ... www.kowanyamss.qld.edu.au/laura_dance_festival.htm - 3k - Cached - Similar pages KowanyamaSS Services Page ... and activities. 2003 Football Carnival Tournament Of the Minds Sports Day Laura Dance Festival. Home. Last modified: October 23, 2003. www.kowanyamss.qld.edu.au/Photo%20Gallery.htm - 7k - Cached - Similar pages Follow ... in the shadows of one of the world's oldest art galleries to celebrate their history and culture for the three day Laura Dance and Cultural Festival in June. ... www.atsic.gov.au/offices/ follow.asp?page=Media&OfficeID=10 - 17k - Cached - Similar pages ATSIC News Winter 97 - Pages 10 -11 ... It is not very often that one event can bring the whole of Cape York to a standstill — but this year's Laura Dance and Cultural Festival achieved that goal ... www.atsic.gov.au/News_Room/ ATSIC_News/Winter_1997/pages10-11.asp - 7k - Cached - Similar pages [ More results from www.atsic.gov.au ] Findhorn.html ... Park, Findhorn, Forres, Moray IV36 3TZ.Phone (from USA) 011 44 1309 690198 or email laura@dance.demon.co.uk. 8 Aug - 18 Aug Koprivshtitsa Festival in Bulgaria. ... homepages.together.net/~seren/Findhorn.html - 4k - Cached - Similar pages Gypsy Music Festival (Part One) Gypsy Music Festival. Part One. by Laura Shannon (laura@dance.demon.co.uk). For seven days this August a Gypsy Music Festival took ... www.dance.demon.co.uk/AGC/Articles/Gypsy1.html - 18k - Cached - Similar pages

01.JPG 640 x 480 pixels - 156k www.jcu.edu.au/.../ web_catalogue/01.JPG Quinkan.GIF 275 x 400 pixels - 86k www.une.edu.au/Arch/ Publications/Quinkan.html rock.jpg 297 x 197 pixels - 16k www.waratahadventures.com.au/ 23day.htm boomearth.gif 149 x 199 pixels - 32k www.fenomeno.trix.net/ fenomeno_inexplicavel_1... fenomeno-abo-art.gif 58 x 120 pixels - 5k www.fenomeno.trix.net/ fenomeno_inexplicavel_1... Au6-dp.jpg 340 x 232 pixels - 32k www.calacademy.org/.../ tap/respix-aust.html quinkan1.jpg 260 x 190 pixels - 11k www.visitcapeyork.com/ people/default.htm camp.jpg 180 x 188 pixels - 13k www.oztours.com.au/ coa.htm 012.jpg 300 x 240 pixels - 20k www.ta-art.com/.../ doku/08-29/08_29.htm 018.jpg 300 x 240 pixels - 29k www.ta-art.com/.../ doku/08-29/08_29.htm [ More results from www.ta-art.com ] adv_culture_jowalbinna3.jpg 150 x 222 pixels - 16k www.xs4all.nl/.../4day_ great_northern_safari.htm img9-3.jpg 170 x 89 pixels - 6k www.wilderness-challenge.com.au/ page9.html img12-2.jpg 200 x 110 pixels - 8k www.wilderness-challenge.com.au/ page12.html t&a_wildernesschallen... 142 x 78 pixels - 5k www.great-barrier-reef.com/ t&a_capeyork_cook.html AUSWEB-BANNER.jpg 720 x 97 pixels - 57k ausweb.scu.edu.au/aw03/ papers/arch__with_celic_/ quinkan.jpg 117 x 145 pixels - 4k www.aboriginalartonline.com/ art/art.html   mvtrinit.jpg 425 x 163 pixels - 19k www.heritagetours.com.au/ 15CapeSeaOver.html jowal2.jpg 133 x 200 pixels - 11k members.ozemail.com.au/ ~safari/aborcult.htm strip3.jpg 587 x 100 pixels - 12k www.qparks.asn.au/ holiday-cairns.html

Google doesn't know what is in pictures,so Google can only include them in the list of images if there is someething attached to them that makes it clear what they are about. That something seems to be an ALT tag, or at least to include ALT tags. So only the images that had ALT tags that fitted the description we gave were included in the images search. Many images of the festival, however, describe the people in them so an image that is of 'Mornington Island people dancing' will not be included in a search looking for the festival, even though that is where they were dancing.

A catalogue record is different. It takes time to make a catalogue record but the things in it are able to be used with great precision to make it easy to find what you want. Imagine if you could do a search in Google's huge collection for something that had:

'dance festival' somewhere in it, say in the title, or a description of it, or the place where it was (coverage spatial Laura Festival) or the time when it was (coverage temporal Laura Festival), or the subject of it, AND that is was a photo (type photo) and that it was a JPRG (format JPEG) and that it was made by Terry (creator Terry) and that it was held in the State Library of Queensland for safe-keeping (AGLS-access SLQ).

Then you could have found all the images that were catalogued. (That is the catch, they might not be catalogued, but once they are, they can be found with precision.)

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