Advisory Committee MeetingTo supplement the monthly progress reports, this short piece draws out a number of the key activities since the last meeting, and points to some of the issues likely to be important in the coming months.
Following discussion within Interoperability Focus' Advisory Committee, a meeting was called for various organisations actively involved in describing and providing access to educational resources across primary, secondary, tertiary and continuing education. The meeting was facilitated by UKOLN, hosted by Resource, and Chaired by Bruce Royan of SCRAN, and attendees represented DfEE, BECTa, the Scottish Executive, FEDA, and others. Interest in the potential for a common approach across these sectors was high, and led to the formation of the Metadata for Education Group (MEG - www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/education/). The group met again in Manchester prior to the ALT conference, and meets again in Edinburgh in November. Other UKOLN staff effort is also now turning to MEG, particularly looking at the potential for a Registry application for the different metadata approaches currently employed. MEG has a great deal of potential, but there is a requirement for greater staff effort in order to realise this in a timely fashion.
An Interoperability Focus-coordinated bid to HEFCE involving staff from UKOLN, Bath's Division of Access and Continuing Studies (DACS) and the University of Hull's Academic Services: Learning Development was successful. We were contracted to write a study of existing learning resources, and their role in the emerging e-University. This study was completed on time and on budget (!), and has been warmly welcomed by those who have seen it. We, and others, are pushing HEFCE for it to be released into the public domain as soon as possible. Since completing the study, we have been approached to consider some further work in this area, and await details.
There is clear potential for building upon both of these initiatives. A useful role for Interoperability Focus lies in bridging the gap between JISC's FE/HE constituency on the one hand and other educational groups on the other as content from NOF and others is applicable to more than one community and educational level. Further staff effort would probably be required to do this job justice.
Over the summer, I have visited Canada several times, and have been involved in discussions relating to their Canadian Digital Library and the Virtual Museum of Canada, both of which are being accelerated under a $CAN75,000,000 programme. The meetings, up to the level of Director General within Canadian Heritage (their DCMS), have been extremely interesting, and have covered heritage digitisation programmes, government online agendas, and wider access issues. There are clear and strong synergies between Canada and the UK (far more so than to the US, where we so often look) in this area, and I'll be looking to build upon these links. The Canadians are clearly keen to work with us. On various trips, I also gave presentations to conferences in Canada, and these are available (along with other presentations) at www.ukoln.ac.uk/interop-focus/presentations/. I have been invited back in April to speak and run a workshop at the Government OnLine conference in Ottawa. It would be useful to explore funding models whereby UK/Canadian collaborative work might be undertaken, along similar lines to EC, EC/NSF or JISC/NSF programmes.
Although discussed almost 12 months ago, a bid was never submitted to the EC for FILAMENT (Facilitating Interoperating Libraries Archives and Museums in Europe through New Technology - an Interoperability Focus for Europe). Interest appears to remain high in moving forward with such a proposal, and time is needed to work out what might most usefully be done and who the partners should be.
Much of Interoperability Focus' current effort is devoted to representing UK interests in international work, or in making international developments relevant to the UK. It is increasingly true that national developments are greatly devalued if they fail to consider international issues and solutions. This international focus should continue, but is expensive. Future funding will need to be adjusted accordingly.
A management briefing event has been organised on the topic of interoperability for November (www.ukoln.ac.uk/events/interop-2000/). As usual, Joy Fraser is doing an excellent job on the organisational side. Andy Powell will also be involved in presenting on the day, and around 100 attendees are expected. Although this event is fully booked, there is a question as to how often such Interoperability Focus events should be organised. It is possibly a better use of time and effort to continue speaking at other events, where the audience is likely to be broader.
In September, a special issue of D-Lib magazine (www.dlib.org/) was published. It contained a series of papers I had commissioned on the topic of collection level description, with an emphasis upon gaining perspectives from across libraries, museums, and archives. The experiment seems to have been successful, and work is now needed from somewhere to move forward on addressing the inter-disciplinary issues raised. Andy and Bridget contributed articles to the issue. This, and other publications from the period, are available at www.ukoln.ac.uk/interop-focus/publications/. The whole area of Collection Level Description is important, and likely to become increasingly so as more large scale repositories of resources go online. UKOLN is already committed to CLD work through funding from RSLP and elsewhere. There is a role for Interoperability Focus in taking forward these findings and looking for cross-domain synergies. Better cross-domain answers to Collection Level Description are probably the most frequently requested new direction for the Focus at present.
Along with other UKOLN staff, Interoperability Focus is involved in the support service (www.ukoln.ac.uk/nof/support/) for the £50,000,000 nof-digi programme, funded by the New Opportunities Fund. During September, this included participating in a series of five workshops around the United Kingdom. This support service is currently funded until the end of 2000, when projects submit their final bids and business plans. The need for ongoing support and guidance through the lifetime of the projects themselves is also being explored.
Sustained effort on the Bath Profile (www.ukoln.ac.uk/interop-focus/bath/) paid off, with accreditation of the Profile by ISO. With this status, the Profile is now official, being deployed, and is supported by a Maintenance Agency. The Agency is at the National Library of Canada, but both myself and Bill Moen in Texas remain closely involved in maintenance, development, and decision making. Work continues to extend functionality, and to bring the remaining vendors on board. Bill Moen has received funding in the US for a testbed of the Profile's MARC21 (old USMARC and CANMARC) functionality. The testbed will comprise a reference server (for those testing clients), a reference client (for those testing servers) and a significant reference data set (provided by OCLC), and marks a very important step forward both for this Profile and for the whole area of conformance testing of Z39.50 and related initiatives. Interoperability Focus is keen to actively explore the possibility for funding a similar testbed in Europe. Such a testbed would cater for UNIMARC (although controversial in some sectors, the Profile offers equal weight to both MARC21 and UNIMARC, which is important for the non-North American audience), and could also usefully explore the cross-domain Functional Area of the Profile, which relies upon Dublin Core.
Work on e-Government continues, and I remain active on the Cabinet Office's metadata working group. A set of Metadata Guidelines - eventually to be mandatory across the public sector - are due out by the end of the year. It is intended that these guidelines be widely circulated for comment, probably appearing on the new GovTalk website (www.govtalk.gov.uk/) during November. The whole area of e-Government, in the UK and elsewhere, is increasingly important and interesting. As the easily identifiable synergies between the UK and Canada have shown, similar efforts are underway around the world. There is a role for Interoperability Focus in actively pursuing these synergies, seeking to ensure a commonality of approach where useful and relevant. I would be keen to explore the possibility of greater involvement with European efforts in this area, and also to build links to Australia and a number of US states similar to those already in place with Canada.
We have now appointed a Research Officer from UKOLN's core grant to work on the dissemination side of some of Interoperability Focus' activities. The appointee starts work in January, but will be based in Bath.