HealthInsite is the Australian federal government's Internet gateway to quality health information. The site was an early adopter of Dublin Core and makes extensive use of metadata in its navigation structure. HealthInsite has two search options utilising the Verity search engine: a simple text search and a metadata search. A third search option is the thesaurus search which is most likely to be used by information specialists. Additional functionality is being considered to improve subject searching for end users. This paper defines the research needed as background to developing the system specifications. The need to consider the whole information retrieval process is emphasised, and a clear role for metadata specialists identified.