Breakout session 1. A strategy for collection description standards
Session 1 Objectives
Make recommendations based on discussion
of the following questions and supporting
notes.
Where do we want to be in two years
time?
What requirements is/are the standard(s) designed to meet?
Should we aim for one standard?
- Is this the best/most useful solution?
- Is this a practical solution?
- What processes would be needed to achieve this?
- What are the problems?
- Who would own and maintain the standard?
Should we work with two standards?
- Is this the best/most useful solution?
- Is this a practical solution?
- What processes would be needed to achieve this?
- What are the problems?
- Who would own and maintain each of the two standards?
If there is to be a new version of
the RSLP schema
- What should its name be?
- Who should be responsible for it?
- Should any new version of the RSLP schema be registered with an appropriate body? (Possible candidates are RLN, JISC/CNI and NISO.)
Background
The Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP) was set up in the academic year 1999 - 2000, with the overarching vision to facilitate the best arrangements for research support in UK Libraries. Two major strands of the project dealt specifically with collaborative collection management and with improving information about collections to enhance resource discovery. As part of the programme, a metadata schema for the description of collections was developed by Andy Powell of UKOLN, based on the theoretical model outlined by Michael Heaney in A Model of Collections and their catalogues. It is this metadata schema that has become known as the RSLP schema.
Further details about the Schema can be found in Pete Johnston's Briefing Paper - RSLP Collection Description Schema. This is available at
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/cd-focus/briefings/
The RSLP schema represents a key phase in the development of collection-level description, and the schema that emerged from the programme remains a useful resource. However, now that the RSLP Programme is finished, it is time to consider the future of the schema and who should own and maintain it, its relationship with the Dublin Core Collection Description Application Profile, and potential future uses and implementation specific modifications.
Issues
- The RSLP programme commissioned the original schema as a tool to support project funded by the programme.
- The programme has come to an end, but the tool (as an Access database implementation of the schema) and the schema documentation is still available.
- Other projects started using the schema, often with modification, to support collection description in specific areas. There is therefore:
- A developing community of implementers.
- A need for interoperability across implementations so that records can be exchanged and databases cross-searched.
- The Dublin Core Collection Description
Working Group is in the process of
getting the core descriptive elements
(i.e. those directly describing the
collection) of the schema registered
as an application profile. Associated
attributes describing agents (e.g.
administrator) and locations (e.g.
physical location address) are excluded
from the draft application profile.
- If we continue to maintain the (revised) RSLP schema, it would be inappropriate to continue using the 'RSLP CD Schema' name - a new name will be needed.
- If we continue to maintain the (revised) RSLP schema, it will require a body to be responsible for ongoing maintenance (e.g. procedure for requesting new fields, making available documentation)
