Collection Description FocusPete Johnston and Bridget Robinson - cd-focus@ukoln.ac.uk
CD Focus website - http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/cd-focus/
CD Focus discussion list - collection-description@jiscmail.ac.uk
Welcome to the July/August edition of the CD Focus news bulletin.
The Focus came to the end of the initial 12 month funding period on 31st May. It has been a busy year encompassing a range of activities including visits and events, ongoing dissemination and advice, all of which have been reported on in previous news bulletins. The Focus is delighted to announce that it is being funded for a further 14 months from 1st June 2002 - 31st July 2003. The funding is being provided by the British Library, the Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP), the JISC and Resource.
The day started with an introduction from Clive Field - Chair of the Full Disclosure Implementation Group and Director of Scholarship & Collections at the British Library. He looked at collections within the context of the Full Disclosure Programme and also within the British Library Resource Management and Resource Discovery context. He raised some interesting issues that helped to stimulate discussion later in the programme.including the ongoing diversity of approaches towards Collection Description, the lack of consensus about the attributes which define a collection and the need for some kind of positive "buy-in" both from scholars and information professionals.(http://www.bl.uk/concord/concord.html)
The morning continued with presentations from Pete Johnston from CD Focus, Peter Winsor from Resource http://www.resource.gov.uk/) and Rachel Bruce Programme Manager(Information Environment/Digital Libraries) JISC/DNER (http://www.jisc.ac.uk/) .Ross McIntyre from MIMAS provided an insight into the practicalities of collection description with a look at his "Famous Five: worked examples from MIMAS" (http://epub.mimas.ac.uk/itam.html). Gordon Dunsire from Napier University finished off the morning's presentations with an examination of some of the issues that need to be considered when creating a collection description service with special reference to the experiences of the SCONE project (http://scone.strath.ac.uk/).
The afternoon opened with a presentation by Ann Chapman from UKOLN outlining the work of the Reveal Project which is: "Uncovering collections for the visually impaired community". This was followed by a presentation from Richard Ovendun - Collection Manager at Edinburgh University about his experience of using OCLC's iCAS service as a tool for collection managers. The day was concluded by Ronald Milne, Programme Director of the RSLP.(http://www.rslp.ac.uk)
There were 2 discussion periods where delegates were invited to question the speakers or simply to raise issues of interest or concern. It was a very successful day offering plenty of opportunity for networking between projects, practitioners and policy makers Museums, Libraries & Archives were all well represented. The presentations are available at http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/cd-focus/events/bd2/programme.html
Below is a list of the more recent ones.
*Society of Archivists EAD and Data Exchange Group AGM - London, May 2002
*British Computer Society/Electronic Publishing Specialist Group One-day conference on Metadata - London, May 2002
*JISC/NSF Digital Libraries Initiative (DLI) All Projects Meeting - Edinburgh, June 2002
JISC Service Providers Workshop on Collection/Service Description - London, July 2002
*Minerva Project - WP3/4 Meeting - Paris, July 2002
All the presentations are available on the CD Focus website http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/cd-focus/presentations/
Future events include the OCLC/SCURL seminar "New directions in metadata" Edinburgh, August 2002