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Status DCMI September 2003 - March 2004

Makx Dekkers/2004-04-02

Organization and management

The DCMI Board of Trustees had a meeting on 27 September 2003 in Seattle, USA, in conjunction with the DC-2003 Annual Conference and Workshop. The Board discussed issues related to the Affiliate and Sponsorship programs, liaisons and co-operation arrangements and preparations for DC-2004. The next meeting of the Board of Trustees will take place on 17 May in New York City.

The DCMI Usage Board had meetings on 27 and 28 September 2003 in Seattle in conjunction with DC-2003, and recently on 14 and 15 March 2004 at UKOLN in Bath, UK. In its meeting in September, the Usage Board adopted a proposal to add two new terms to the DCMI Type vocabulary: Moving Image and Still Image. The new terms are documented on the Web page "DCMI Metadata Terms" and in an updated RDF schema. In November 2003, Akira Miyazawa of the National Institute of Informatics (NII) in Tokyo replaced Haruki Nagata of the University of Tsukuba (Japan) on the DCMI Usage Board. In the March 2004 meeting, the Usage Board discussed proposals from the Collection Description Working Group and a proposal for DC-Rights related terms. The decisions on these proposals will be published shortly on the DCMI Web site.

The DCMI Advisory Board, in its meeting in Seattle on 3 October 2003, discussed and approved proposals for changes in DCMI Working Groups. It was decided that all groups will from now on be called Working Groups. All groups have a role in providing a discussion platform for the community on the subject defined in the charter. Working Groups can, but do not have to, have identified deliverables.

Further changes approved were: to establish a Preservation Working Group, chaired by Heike Neuroth (State and University Library Göttingen, Germany) and Andrew Wilson (National Archives of Australia); to re-open the Date Working Group, chaired by Eric Childress (OCLC, USA); to rename the User Guides Working Group to User Documentation Working Group, chaired by Mary Woodley (California State University Northridge); and to close the Administrative Working Group, chaired by Leif Andresen (Library Authority of Denmark).

The following new chairs were appointed: Andy Powell (UKOLN, UK) is the new chair of the Architecture Working Group; Stu Weibel (OCLC, USA) replaces José Borbinha (National Library of Portugal) as co-chair of the Agents Working Group; Helen Josephine (Intel Library, USA) and Sarah Rice (Seneb Consulting, USA) are the new co-chairs of the Global Corporate Circle; John Roberts (Archives New Zealand) replaces Andrew Wilson (National Archives of Australia) as co-chair of the Government Working Group; Karen Rollitt (National Library of New Zealand) replaces Olga Barysheva (National Library of Russia) as co-chair of the Localization and Internationalization Working Group; and Robina Clayphan (The British Library, UK) replaces Rebecca Guenther (Library of Congress, USA) as chair of the Libraries Working Group.

DCMI Affiliate Program

After the National Library of Finland became DCMI's first National Affiliate, discussions are underway with several candidates. We hope to be able to announce furthr agreements in the next months. The DCMI Affiliate program is intended to provide a stronger link between local communities of practice and the Initiative. Affiliates will help support the infrastructure and management of DCMI, and in return, will assume a growing governance role in the Initiative.

Technical developments

At the end of November 2003, Expressing Dublin Core in HTML/XHTML meta and link elements became a DCMI Recommendation. This document describes how a Dublin Core metadata record can be embedded into a Web page using HTML/XHTML elements.

Cooperation and liaison

CEN/ISSS

At the end of 2003, the CEN/ISSS Workshop on Dublin Core metadata published a set of documents as the results of its 2003 work program. The documents are: CWA 13988 Information for the use of Dublin Core in Europe, CWA 14855 Dublin Core Application Profile guidelines, CWA 14856 Guidance material for mapping between Dublin Core and ISO in the Geographic Information domain, CWA 14857 Mapping between Dublin Core and IS 19115, "Geographic Information - Metadata", CWA 14858 Dublin Core Spatial Application Profile, CWA 14859 Guidance on the use of metadata in eGovernment, and CWA 14860 Dublin Core eGovernment Application Profiles.

In the 2004 work plan, this Workshop will work on a revision of CWA 13988, on definition, guidance and promotion of an EU eGovernment Metadata Framework, on guidance for the deployment of Dublin Core metadata in Corporate environments, on specification of machine-readable representation of Application Profiles, on guidance for naming, versioning, evolution and maintenance of element declarations and Application Profiles and on a report identifying of metadata issues enabling support for accessibility and mulitlinguality.

Other liaisons

At DC-2003, a meeting was held with IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee (LTSC) to work on practical activities following the earlier work on Metadata Principles and Practicalities. The DCMI Accessibility Working Groups established a joint work item with the IMS Accessibility Group. The DCMI Directorate was involved in discussions as part of the OASIS Technical Committees on Legal XML Legislative and OpenOffice and participated in review of the PBCore, the metadata standard of the Public Broadcasting Metadata Dictionary Project.

Working and Interest Group highlights

DCMI Accessibility

The DC-Accessibility Working Group is participating in an effort to develop a resource application profile that will accommodate discovery and other applications based on the ACCLIP (Accessibility for Learner Information Package, AccessForAll) user profile. ACCMD (Accessibility Meta-data) is an open activity working towards a solution that is also accommodated within a Dublin Core application profile. This activity is hosted by the IMS Global Learning Consortium, .

The Working Group met in Orlando, Florida, USA, in mid-January 2004 and Zürich, Switzerland, in early February 2004. Within a short time, a document for consideration by interested experts will be available and the Working Group will report on outcomes from that process and continue to work towards the development of the profile. The Working Group conducts weekly teleconferences and people interested should contact Liddy Nevile if they would like to participate in this process.

DC-Accessibility is participating in the CEN/ISSS Workshop on Dublin Core Metadata in Europe. Liddy Nevile and Martin Ford are representing DC-Accessibility in this context. An open workshop is held on 30 April 2004 in Brussels for consideration of issues in a report that will be prepared in this context. At this meeting, a draft of the ACCMD specification will also be considered. Please refer to the meeting announcement for further details.

DCMI Administrative Metadata

The goal of DCMI Administrative Metadata Working Group was to propose an element set for the management of metadata based on the work with "Admin Core - Administrative Container Metadata (A-Core)". The final specification "AC - Administrative Components - Dublin Core DCMI Administrative Metadata" is available at the Web site of the National Library Authority of Denmark. Following the publication of this report, the Working Groups was deactivated.

DCMI Agents

After the Working Group's meeting in Seattle on 2 October 2003 where a new charter and a new set of deliverables were discussed, the group is now in the process of discussing a specification of Functional Requirements for Describing Agents.

DCMI Architecture

Two sessions took place in October 2003 in Seattle: one on the Abstract Model that is under development and one on RDF expression of DC metadata. Following the publication of the RDF Recommendations by W3C in February 2004, the Proposed Recommendation "Expressing Qualified Dublin Core in RDF / XML" will be revised in the coming months. The Abstract Model is expected to become available for Public Comment before the Summer of 2004.

DCMI Citation

The group is working on Guidelines for Encoding Bibliographic Citation Information in Dublin Core Metadata based on previous proposals and discussions by the Working Group and related papers. A first draft is expected to be available in Spring 2004.

DCMI Collection Description

The Working Group meeting at DC-2003 discussed and resolved a number of outstanding issues with the 2003-08-25 draft of the Application Profile. There is one significant issue outstanding regarding the descriptive semantics of the Application Profile, and guidance was requested from the Advisory Board on two other issues of policy. The principal item of the workplan for 2004 is the finalization of the Application Profile for collection-level description, together with supporting materials.

The Working Group submitted two proposals for new DCMI terms (Provenance and IsAvailableAt) to the DCMI Usage Board for consideration in the UB's meeting in Bath on 14-15 March. The conclusions of these discussions will be posted soon.

DCMI Date

The DCMI Date Working Group was reactivated at the DCMI Advisory Board meeting in Seattle. In its 2003-2004 workplan, this Working Group considers options to provide for the interoperable representation of commonly-recorded dates which cannot be satisfactorily represented using ISO 8601, potential additional refinements for the Date element, and potential additional schemes for the Date and/or Coverage elements. The work plan works towards general completion before DC-2004..

Since DC-2003, the group has agreed specific categories to be addressed, identified several technical and philosophical questions and issues related to existing values for Date and the tempora refinement for Coverage.

DCMI Global Corporate Circle

The report of the Metadata and Search pre-conference, held in Seattle on 28 September 2003, is now available. The report contains links to the presentations.

In 2004, the group is working on three activities:

1. Organizing a special session or conference track for next year's conference in Shanghai for case studies or best practices in implementing Dublin Core in the corporate setting. Efforts are being coordinated with the DCMI Directorate and the Shanghai Organizing Committee.At this point, the process for formulating a special conference track have been clarified. It depends on the paper submissions before further decisions on a special corporate track can be taken.
2. An all day pre or post-conference workshop similar to the Search and Metadata workshop at next year's conference in Shanghai. Basic details for the conference workshop to be outlined by March or April of 2004. Initial communication has been sent regarding the pre-conference workshop to announce the theme and solicit feedback, input on content and format, and volunteers.
3. Collection of best practices, case studies and other materials with an ultimate goal of creating implementation guidelines for DC in the corporate setting. This will be facilitated through the Global Corporate Circle mailing list (sign up), and resulting documents will be published on the Corporate Circle web site (or elsewhere depending on demand)

DCMI Environment

In December 2003, a new version was published of the Survey on the Use of Dublin Core in the Environmental Domain. Work on the use of DCMI Point and DCMI Box has been initiated. A report on the use of controlled terminology is in preparation. Liaisons with the CEN/ISSS Workshop on Dublin Core Metadata and the European Environment Agency EEA continue.

DCMI Government

The work plan of the group for 2003-2004 includes further work on a Government Application Profile, updating the Survey of the use of Dublin Core by governments, definitions and guidelines for service descriptions, and collation of training materials.

DCMI Libraries

At the Working Group's meeting at DC-2003, the group was informed about the latest Usage Board decisions and the effect of these on the Library Application Profile. Several outstanding issues in the Application Profile were agreed which will be reflected in the next version. Changes to the Charter were proposed to reflect the fact that Dublin Core metadata is now widely used in the library world. A new work plan was drawn up.

Highlights of workplan 2003-2004: the Library Application Profile will be updated in line with Usage Board and Working Group decisions and reformatted in conformance with the CEN/ISSS Dublin Core Application Profile Guidelines (CWA 14855). It will be an ongoing process for member to submit proposals for encoding schemes - these will be given a Library of Congress URI if appropriate. Guidelines for the Library Application Profile and an XML schema will be produced.

DCMI Persistent Identifiers

The DCMI Working Group on Persistent Identifiers held a face to face scoping meeting in Washington DC in February 2004 to refine its work plan and focus its objectives. The purpose of the group is to provide neutral guidance to the metadata community for the more effective use of persistent identifiers. The effort is expected to proceed in three phases:

1. Solicit input from community on issues and problems associated with persistent identifiers and how they are being used today in our community, as well as to identify particular areas in which the community would like guidance.
2. Report on the survey results to the community, probably in conjunction with DC-2004
3. Develop and issue guidance in the form of a policy paper. An outline or draft of this document should be ready for DC-2004.

The drafting committee for this activity recognizes the large scope of the problem, and the need to retain a tight scope and focus to achieve these objectives. Additionally, there are political and economic issues that play an increasing importance in the choice and deployment of identifiers and may lead to contention concerning any recommendations emerging. None the less, working group members remain persistent in their desire to advance the discussion.

DCMI Preservation

DCMI Registry

After the Working Group's meeting at DC-2003, a new charter was issued and the work plan for 2004 was defined. This includes an upgrade to Jena 2.0, enhancements to make application easier to install and extend and address a number of open issues, particularly how to most effectively provide access to information not readily available in RDF (e.g. application profiles); if and how to manage access to prior (historical) versions of terms; how to manage different versions of translations; how distributed registries would collaborate; how to manage 'canonical' version of a term; and how to manage provenance information in a distributed environment.

On 18 March 2004, version 3.0 of the Registry was released, built on the Jena 2.0 API, which provides support for both RDF and OWL. In addition to some user-interface improvements, a significant amount of work was put into making this release easier to install and manage, including several new tools to better manage translations and resources.

DCMI Standards

The official text of the ISO Standard IS 15836-2003 was finally published in November 2003. The Working Group is now looking at approaches to further submissions of DCMI documents for formal standardization.

DCMI User Documentation

This Group continues to maintain Using Dublin Core, the DCMI Glossary and the DCMI Bibliography.

Conference schedule

DC-2003 was held in Seattle WA, USA, from 28 September to 2 October 2003. The event attracted over 300 participants from 20 countries. Abstracts and full text of the papers and posters are available on the Program section of the conference Web site.. A report of the pre-conference on Metadata and Search is also available, with links to the presentations.

DC-2004, the International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications 2004, will be held from 11 through 14 October 2004 at Shanghai Library in China. This event is hosted by Shanghai Library and sponsored by the Library of Chinese Academy of Sciences, the National Science and Technology Library of China and DCMI.

The conference theme this year will be "Metadata across languages and cultures". More information is available from the Conference Web site. The Call for Papers was published on 9 February 2004. Papers can be submitted online until 1 May 2004. The Program Committee under chairmanship of Thomas Baker of Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, Germany, and Wei Liu of Shanghai Library consists of 60 experts from more than 15 countries.

Community

In March 2004, the total number of subscriptions to the active DCMI Working Groups was 3,297, an increase of 11% compared to March 2003. The general mailing list DC-General had 978 subscribers, an increase of 3% in a year. The five largest working and interests groups were: DCMI Libraries (374 subscribers), DCMI Education (312), DCMI Government (200), DCMI Architecture (149) and DCMI Environment (141).

The number of visitors to the DCMI Web site has gone up from an average of around 40,000 per month in the beginning of 2003 to an average of more than 50,000 per month in the first three months of 2004.