Collection Description Focus

Bridget Robinson & Ann Chapman - cd-focus@ukoln.ac.uk

CD Focus website - http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/cd-focus/

CD Focus discussion list - collection-description@jiscmail.ac.uk

The Focus came to the end of the 14-month funding period on 31st July 2003. Once again it has been a very busy time encompassing a range of activities including the regional workshops, the CD Focus Showcase and the ongoing development of a structured training programme based around the CDF Online Tutorial. Dissemination too has played a key role with the publication of guidance papers, briefing papers and our first case study. The Focus have continued to present at a number of different events and to publish papers in key journals.

An Evaluation of the work of the CD Focus took place over the period 25th March to 30th June 2003. Professor Peter Brophy of LIMC LTD undertook the Evaluation. The overall intention of the evaluation was to provide information on the major benefits derived from the work of the CD Focus, including performance against the original objectives. Then, based on this, to submit recommendations for future actions, practices and policies.

The work included a full day meeting with UKOLN, including the staff of CD Focus, interviews with key individuals, an email survey of stakeholders and an analysis of CD Focus, documents, publications, presentations and tools. The report acknowledged the "successful background of two years' activities by the focus" and recommended that the Focus should be funded for at least a further year.

This recommendation has been accepted and the CD Focus will be funded for twelve months from 1st August 2003 - 31st July 2004. The funding is being provided by the British Library, the JISC and Resource. The work plan for this new period is yet to be finalised but will include the following strands:

• Establishing a nationally/internationally recognised collection description schema
• Extending the schema to cover collection management data and collections of learning objects
• Investigating ways of providing "generic guidance" on the use of terminology in collection description
• Building international links
• Engaging with a wider community including Further Education, Museums, Archives and Public Libraries
• Developing the Online Tutorial and linked training courses

Work on the first of these actions has already started.

In the last newsletter it was reported that the Dublin Core Collection Description Working Group (DC CD WG) is discussing the development of a DC-based metadata schema for collection-level description, using the collection description attributes of the RSLP CD Schema as a starting point.

Discussion is already taking place via the DC Collections mailing list and will be continued at a face to face meeting of the DC CD WG during the DC-2003 Conference in Seattle. The meeting will be held on Monday 29 September 2003, and is open to anyone registered for the conference.
See http://dc2003.ischool.washington.edu/program.html

Implementers are encouraged to join the list and contribute to the work. Your experiences in applying the schema will be a valuable contribution to the discussion and in taking the schema forward. A posting about the experience of the Reveal project Collection Register can be viewed on the DC-Collections email archive.
If you are interested in this area, we encourage you to join the working group by subscribing to the mailing list at http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/DC-COLLECTIONS.html

CD Focus are planning to hold a Schemas Forum later in the year. The Forum will provide an opportunity to discuss and comment on:

• the application profile emerging from the work of the DC CD WG.
• the implications of an enlarged schema that incorporates elements for Agents and Locations. (Many implementations are using RSLP elements as the basis of their individual schema with extensions. A number of these extensions are common to several implementations and could possibly be used to create an extended schema).
• the branding of the schema.

Full dates and details will be published in the next newsletter

September/October News Bulletin

Copy for the next news bulletin should be sent to cd-focus@ukoln.ac.uk by 26th September 2003.