Abstract
The article presents four French projects on subject metadata use: a medical portal (Caducee.net1), a subject gateway (Les Signets2), a catalogue of patents (INPI, Institut National de la Propriété Industrielle3) and a full-text database of the daily newspaper "Libération". The last project is not a public Web application yet but it presents the most innovative approach to subject metadata usage discussed in the article. These projects, both completed and in progress, as a common characteristic share the use of controlled documentary languages. By this means, they try to increase the efficiency of information retrieval for the remote user.
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