Thinking Collectively

Programme details

Contributors to the workshop include:

• Pete Johnston & Bridget Robinson:
  Thinking collectively : approaches to collection-level description

  Pete Johnston joined UKOLN in January 2001 as Interoperability Research Officer to support the work of the Interoperability Focus.

  From 1997 to 2000, he was a member of a digital records management project based at Glasgow University Archive Services. During this period, he also developed tools and provided guidance to support the EAD-based collection-level description work which was carried out by the archivists at Glasgow as data providers to the HE Archives Hub.

  Pete has experience in the area of mark-up technologies, and since joining UKOLN, he has sought to develop his understanding of metadata-related technologies, particularly the application of RDF. He has worked on the registration of metadata schemas for educational resources and contributed to the evaluation of a Microsoft Access implementation of the RSLP CD schema.

  Pete's role has now been extended to incorporate the work of the Collection Description Focus.

  Bridget Robinson, Research Officer, joined UKOLN in January 2000 to work on the Agora project. Agora was one of the five elib hybrid Library projects which began in January 1998. It formed part of Phase 3 of the elib programme investigating issues of digital library implementation and integration.

  Collection Level Descriptions were used within the Agora interface as a way of matching users to resources. Agora used the collection schema drafted by the national working group and edited by UKOLN. Bridget has worked in both Public and HE libraries and with a range of Commercial Information Providers.

  Bridget is now working as part of the Collection Description Focus.

• Andy Powell:
  The RSLP Collection Description Model & Schema

• Paul Hollands:
  Describing Performing Arts Collections

• Rachel Perkins:
  Collection Level Descriptions at The Natural History Museum

  Rachel has been in post as Collection Level Description Officer at The Natural History Museum since September 2000. She is responsible for producing collection level descriptions for the diverse collections at the Museum. Prior to this she worked as the Documentation Officer at the Horniman Museum & Gardens. Raised and educated in Canada, she worked in documentation and collections management for eight years at the Canadian Museum of Civilization before returning to England in 1998. Her academic background is archaeology, history and museums. She is currently working on the Museum's Association's AMA programme.

• Amanda Hill:
  Collection Description in the Archives Hub : explaining collection description from the archival perspective and detailing the approach taken by the Archives Hub project

  Amanda Hill is the Project Manager for the Archives Hub, a JISC-funded service that provides access to descriptions of archives held in the UK's universities and colleges. Before taking up this post she was the archivist in Rhodes House Library, Oxford (part of the Bodleian) and prior to that worked as an archivist in local authority record offices in Chelmsford and Canterbury.