DCMI Update

Volume 1, Number 3 - March 2000

• Banners and badges are now available to include on your web site.

  The banners and badges are provided in the JPEG file format for use by members of the public who wish to include them on a Web site. No special permission is required from the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative to reproduce these images, however, banners must be linked directly to the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative Web site at http://dublincore.org/

News Briefs

• 2000-02-16: CIMI Institute Announces three new venues for its workshop: Helping People Find What They Want: Implementing the Dublin Core in Museums

  This two day workshop focuses on information access and management issues in museums and cultural heritage organizations through the use of the CIMI recommendations for the Dublin Core metadata standard. This workshop is designed for museum and cultural heritage professionals, information managers, systems staff, and administrators looking for ways to better manage information resources and make them available to the broad World Wide Web audience. Technical expertise is not required.

  Places and Dates: [Workshop information and registration]

  March 29-30, 2000: Vancouver, BC, Canada
  April 27-28, 2000: Amstelveen, the Netherlands
  May 31-June 1, 2000: Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

• 2000-03-06: DC-Education: F2F Downunder, February 19-20, 2000

  The meeting of the DC-Education Working Group in Australia in February was a successful first venture into the realm of domain specific enhancements to the basic Dublin Core element set. Thirty participants gathered in a rustic lodge setting in the hills outside of Melbourne, Australia to extend discussions begun at DC-7 in Frankfurt, Germany. The report and recommendations from the meeting will soon be available for review and discussion. Highlights include proposals for encoding the intended audience of the resource as well as indications of conformance of the resource to formal standards. Various deployment alternatives were proposed for further discussion in the broader community. Other important discussion issues included questions of mixing and matching metadata from related sets, and how the community should address controversial topics such as measures of quality and descriptions of pedagogy. These are desirable retrieval characteristics for some communities, but are fraught with ideological judgments that complicate the creation of interoperable metadata. The report will be discussed on the DC-Education list and will be posted to DC-General in the near future.

Project and Tool Updates

• 2000-02-22: New Project - Australasian Virtual Engineering Library (AVEL)

  The Australasian Virtual Engineering Library (AVEL) is a gateway to quality Australasian engineering and information technology web-based resources. AVEL project documentation (including metadata schema and metadata manual) is available.

• Project Summary: Foundation Project (submitted by Eileen Quam)

  The Foundations Project is a State of Minnesota multi-agency collaborative project aimed at improving public access to environmental and natural resources data and information. The focus of the Project is on developing intuitive and easy to use search tools and strategies. Staff and agency participants catalog many kinds of electronic information resources using qualified Dublin Core elements. These resources can be used to develop advanced search and retrieval techniques that integrate access to this information across agency Web sites. The search interface is called Bridges (http://bridges.state.mn.us), signifying the metaphorical spanning of information across Minnesota state agencies. Based on project research findings and using principles of information architecture, a "blueprint" specifying best practices for Minnesota state environmental agency Web sites is being created. As the Foundations Project nears completion, efforts are in place to bring the successes and blueprint to the remaining state agencies.

  In summary, the project is working on:

  • Consumer-oriented needs for environmental information and data maintained or made available through Minnesota state agencies
  • An approach that will provide integrated access to environmental information and data consistent with emerging technology standards, guidelines and best practices, including qualified Dublin Core, controlled vocabulary, and standardized application of metadata
  • Evaluating the approach's effectiveness for integrated access, using external reviewers who represent a wide range of public points of view
  • Designing, evaluating and expediting guidelines for documentation, thesaurus and metadata implementation, which promotes responsive search and retrieval procedures
  • Providing skilled assistance to state agencies that catalog environmental information
  • Preparing a workable blueprint to improve discovery and retrieval of environmental information resources, based on research and testing throughout the project
  • Conducting outreach to inform key user groups and promote implementation of the blueprint throughout state government.

The Legislative Commission on Minnesota Resources, Information Policy Council and the Environmental Quality Board receive periodic updates. Completion date for the project will be June 30, 2000. For more information contact:

Eileen Quam
Project Coordinator & Metadata Specialist
eileen.quam@dnr.state.mn.us

Web Site Changes

• 2000-02-29: Updated the FAQ

Suggestions, article or item submissions and any comments may be sent to dc@oclc.org. Deadline for submissions is the 20th of each month.