This page is based upon text submitted to the Interoperability Focus Advisory Committee, and represents a number of the main activities in the month of July. The list is not exhaustive, and comments and queries are welcomed.
Events attended
For once, most of the month was spent in and around Hull, with some days of
holiday and even some days in the office. Noteworthy trips and meetings
included:
- I travelled down to London for a meeting at the Cabinet Office about the
overdue Government metadata guidelines. They're on their way...
- In Hull, two people that Cris Woolston and I met at the MEG meeting in
June travelled up from North Lincolnshire College to discuss some of the
work they're doing with educational metadata, and to look at ways of working
together. Interesting, and well worth pursuing...
- Also in Hull, Martin Greenwood of the SOCiety of IT Managers (SOCITM) came
up to talk about a document they are writing on metadata/information for a
local government audience. He is forming a small working group, and was
seeking some input. I'm meant to be putting something together from existing
UKOLN material for the end of August.
- At the end of the month, I travelled to the National Monuments Record
Centre in Swindon, to give a talk on interoperability, and to chat about
some of their projects. Of interest were Images of England (a Lottery
project to scan photos of every listed building in England - part of which
will be put up in pilot form soon) and an experimental piece of software
called 3di. This offers a 3D interface (using a
browser plug-in called VisScape) which allowed the user access to English
Heritage's big (huge) database of monuments and events. I can see loads of
applications for this and things like it in making big, complex databases
both manageable and accessible. Unfortunately, it's not available outside
Swindon yet.
In Progress
- Alicia Wise, the JISC Collections Manager, and I continue to work on a
paper to explain what vendors need to do in order to plug into the DNER.
- A date (24 November) is hopefully now fixed for the Interoperability
event.
- To supplement the NOF Technical Standards and Guidelines, UKOLN
are drawing up a programme for five briefing workshops to be held in
September. We're also offering an e-mail support service to stage 2
applicants.
- Personnel down in Bath are (hopefully!) in the process of advertising an
Interoperability Research Officer... This individual will be employed for 2
years, and may be based here in Hull. With luck, we can work together to
make the backlog smaller, and to more actively disseminate some of this
stuff. Should be good...
- The special issue of D-Lib Magazine on Collection Level Description will
come out in September. Papers are due with me at the start of August.
Monthly News