Duke University Libraries has begun embedding structured metadata within the source code of the Web pages that display the Libraries' digital collections, a practice that follows the recommendations of the
schema.org initiative, an effort by commercial search engine developers to use structured data to enrich the user's experience. Duke's objectives in adopting
schema.org relate both to the ways that an exterior service like Google might represent the institution's materials, and how the organization will offer services to researchers. Usage analysis suggests that systems outside of Duke's library, largely consisting of the commercial search tools, drive traffic to University collections, and the institution wants to increase its own systems' interoperability with them. Duke is also piloting a local instance of Google, via its Site Search API, with the potential to enhance and replace the discovery services offered to users. The library sees embedded structured data as a way to extend the impact of the time and resources spent on discovery tools for the content that it manages.