- During April, work co-ordinating the Coverage Working Group of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative resulted in the submission of a revised definition for this element back into the Dublin Core process.
Other UKOLN staff chair two further groups in this process, and their definitions are also part of ongoing discussions within this community.
- Also Dublin Core-related, Eric Miller (from OCLC), myself and Dan Brickley (from ILRT in Bristol) produced a document on the manner in which both qualified and unqualified Dublin Core may be represented within the important metadata initiative called the Resource Description Framework (RDF).
This document attempts to capture the consensus built up over more than a year within the Dublin Core's Data Model group and is currently before that group for endorsement. It is sincerely hoped that the document will go a long way towards resolving much of the current confusion over how to do Dublin Core.
Events attended
- At the end of March, John Perkins (CIMI, Canada), Thomas Hoffman (Australian Museums On-Line, Australia) and myself visited Taiwan as guests of the Taiwanese National Science Council and the National Taiwan University. We presented a series of sessions over three days on Dublin Core, XML and RDF, the presentations for which are available on the web site.
- I attended a workshop in Washington DC organised by the National Information Standards Organisation (NISO) to investigate metadata for the (primarily technical) description of digital images. Attendees included academics, museum professionals, imaging professionals (NASA et al.) and commercial representatives from organisations such as Kodak.
The emphasis ended up being very much upon trying to identify what, if anything, was 'special' or 'different' about images and addressing that, rather than coming up with yet another complex metadata standard that attempted to do it all. There was also an interesting recognition of the compromise between what you might like, what you can afford to catalogue in every case, and what the vendors might be persuaded to build into their software. A common problem in the text world, where mark-up tools have a habit of stripping pre-entered metadata out of files and inserting their own also appeared in this context, with several products being identified as guilty of stripping information from image file headers.
- As part of a gradual process of visiting various people, I travelled up to Edinburgh to spend a day with staff at EDINA. We had some wide ranging discussions around the services that they offer and the ways in which they might be made more interoperable; for example, how might a user search any EDINA resources in conjunction with those from elsewhere.
I hope to visit MIDAS, the Data Archive, and other organisations soon for similar discussions.
- UKOLN's Andy Powell and I attended a meeting at the Natural History Museum along with staff from the museum and Louise Smith and Matthew Stiff from the mda. We had some wide-ranging discussions around the UK's forthcoming '24 Hour Museum', and the use it might make of evolving standards for the description and mark-up of 'collections' This led on to discussion of UKOLN's work on Collection Description and the ways in which it might be applicable beyond the library sector. Andy is working to finalise the UKOLN document, and we shall be looking at ways in which it ties in to work elsewhere, such as a soon-to-be-finalised document from CIMI on Scope of Collections in the cultural heritage sector, with which I may be involved.
Work in Progress
- I am currently working to add more information to the web site, and would welcome input as to priority areas in which this effort might best be expended.
- Work on a document mapping the 'Information Landscape' proceeds. A list of the key topics to investigate in this report is due before the Advisory Committee by the end of April.
- Following requests for input from a number of sources, I am working to look more closely at metadata standards from IMS and the IEEE in order to provide some structured comments on them. I need to liase with other UKOLN staff who also have interests in this area.
- As mentioned above, I was involved in co-ordinating the delivery of a revised definition of the Dublin Core's Coverage element. I am now working with Ren Iannella (of DSTC in Australia) and others to unify the style of the 15 new definitions, ensuring consistency and clarity that was perhaps lacking previously.
- Work on the Z39.50 Interoperability Profile continues under the steer of the National Library of Canada's Carrol Lunau. We have agreed to work from the rapidly stabilising Texas Profile written by Bill Moen, and e-mails continue to fly back and forth, supplemented by the odd teleconference.
Potential work
- Following the document on Dublin Core in RDF [5], Eric Miller, myself and Dan Brickley are exploring the possibility of a further document attempting to pin down the conceptual model behind the Dublin Core. This work would aim to produce a document within about a month which would capture the current (unstated) Dublin Core 'data model', as well as pointing to the ways in which it is moving towards parity with other initiatives such as indecs and IMS.
- There is a need to start disseminating existing knowledge to a wide community, with an obvious way to do this being through publication. I am assisting Shelagh Fisher, one of the collaborators on the original NARD report, in preparing a paper for Catalogue & Index, and am looking around for a few choice topics on which something can be produced by me relatively quickly to good effect.
- There have been several, mainly European, approaches for various pieces of collaborative work. Some of these are now being discussed with a view to clarifying what would be done, and the benefits of this to Interoperability Focus and the community at large.
- Efforts continue in approaching people and establishing useful contacts. Approaches from the other side are, as always, welcomed.
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