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Makx Dekkers/2005-03-07
The DCMI Board of Trustees met on 9 October 2004 in Shanghai, China. The Board discussed issues related to DCMI budget and priorities, the Affiliate programs, and preparations for DC-2004. The next meeting of the Board of Trustees will take place on 3 and 4 April 2005 in Seeheim, near Frankfurt, Germany.
After its meeting on 9 and 10 October 2004 in Shanghai, the DCMI Usage Board published documentation related to the decisions that were taken at that meeting. The Usage Board is planning its next meeting to take place in Washington, DC, USA in May 2005.
Further development of the DCMI Abstract model has continued. After the document was finalized in the Architecture Working Group, the DCMI Advisory Board reviewed it before it went out for Public Comment in February 2005. Together with this status report, the Abstract Model is published as a DCMI Recommendation.
There are four main work items:
Plans are underway for doing the work but already efforts to do with liaison are taking place. Adoption of the term is an ISO Work Item and it has been accepted by the ePortfolio community. Funding is being sought to support some of the work. Tools developers are being encouraged to adopt the new specifications.
The work is continuing collaboratively with the IMS Global Learning consortium and a working meeting involving face-to-face participants and some teleconferencing was held in Melbourne, Australia, in the second week of February 2005. There are several mailing lists for discussion about the new term. A Wiki has been set up but there has been little use of it to date. Weekly teleconferences are held by the working members of the group. A journal paper describing the new term's use is in final edit stage for the IBM Journal of Research and Development.
There will be relevant ISO meetings in March 2005 in Japan and in April 2005 in the UK and then later in 2005 in the USA. There will be working group meetings in the US in May 2005 and another later in the year before DC-2005 in September 2005. A workshop on accessibility metadata is being planned for DC-2005.
Following the Shanghai conference, Andrew Wilson and John Roberts took over from John Kunze and Stu Weibel as co-chairs of the Working Group. The aim of the group remains the development of a core set of attributes for describing agents, and of a mechanism for linking resource description records to agent description records.
A draft set of functional requirements developed in 2004 by Andrew Wilson and Robina Clayphan will be refined, and used as the basis for development of an Agent element set. Linking mechanisms will be developed in conjunction with DC-Architecture and reflect the way that related descriptions and rich representations are articulated in the DCMI Abstract Model. Other metadata communities are also actively involved with agent description, and it will be important to maintain communications with related efforts.
The group's workplan includes the following items:
Item 1 is progressing and is on target. The DCMI Abstract Model is being published as a DCMI Recommendation together with this Status Report. Item 2 hasn't been started. Consideration is being given to the make-up of the taskforce required for item 3, but no real progress has been made. A suggested way forward for item 4 was made to the DC-Architecture list by Pete Johnston. In the absence of any negative comments, we will seek to implement this proposal. There has been no progress on items 5 and 6. The intention is still to complete items 1 to 6 in the next 6 months.
Currently the only item on the Workplan is to finish the Guidelines for Encoding Bibliographic Citation Information in Dublin Core Metadata.
The Guidelines document has been updated following various comments received, including some comments to the Working Group chair from interested parties outside DCMI. Apart from XML encoding issues this document is nearing completion.
The publication of the DCMI Abstract Model means that the DCMI guidelines for encoding DC metadata in XML need revision. The XML encoding of citation information, as detailed in previous versions of the Citation Guidelines, will need revising when the new DC-in-XML encoding is agreed.
Because of the XML encoding issue, it was decided to split the Citation Guidelines document into two parts. The first part, which gives general guidance on capturing bibliographic citation information in DC with some XHTML examples, will be published following the DCMI process of Advisory Board and public reviews, beginning in March. The second part, which gives recommendations for encoding citation information in XML, will be written when the revised DC-in-XML guidelines become available. This new document will be added to the Working Group's workplan.
The principal item of the workplan is the finalization of the Application Profile for collection-level description, together with supporting materials.
A meeting of the DC CD Working Group took place during the DC-2004 conference in Shanghai in October 2004. Although there was some discussion of the current issues surrounding the DC CD AP, none of the issues were fully resolved during the meeting. A workplan for 2004-2005 was approved by the meeting, see the meeting report. During the conference, the work of the DC CD Working Group was also presented as part of a tutorial on DC Application Profiles, and during a "special session" on the work of the NISO Metasearch Initiative. A presentation was also given to a workshop in London in January 2005, organized by the JISC IE Service Registry project.
Progress is now running slightly behind the schedule described in the Workplan. It is hoped that some progress can be made on the Service/Location issue in time to work on any proposals for properties required in time for submission to the next meeting of the Usage Board, but it may be that clarification of those relationships means that those proposals are not developed until later in 2005.
The Working Group has begun to review the collection type vocabulary. There has also been some discussion of identifiers for collections. No requests have been raised for the addition of further descriptive attributes to the DC CD AP, but there remain issues to be resolved with the current draft, particularly regarding the Collection-Location/Collection-Service relationships and how they are represented.
The workplan for 2004-2005 was approved by consensus. This will be posted on the Working Group's Web page in March 2005. The workplan is largely a continuation of work items from the 2003-2004 workplan. Item 1, an examination of DC Date's definition and comment to explicitly embrace the concept of date range, is currently underway. We hope to complete this initial work item and proceed with additional work items shortly.
In the next six months, the workplan will be systematically pursued, particularly considering whether additional schemes should be proposed for adoption.
As part of the work done at the Shanghai meeting in October 2004, it was agreed that efforts would be made to articulate the problems inherent in ‘mixing and matching’ terms from the XML-based LOM schema and the RDF-based DC schema in an Application Profile. Two draft papers have been posted addressing these issues: Johnston, P. (2005). XML, RDF, and DCAPs (Draft) and Powell, A. (2005) DCMI Mixing and Matching FAQ. Since Shanghai, the Metadata FAQ developed collaboratively by members from IEEE LOM, DCMI, and others is now live at: http://www.cetis.ac.uk/metadatafaq/FrontPage. It is published using a Wiki and it is hoped that it will be further developed over time.
The DC-Education Working Group has been gearing up for its work on development of a formal DC-Education application profile (AP). The basic template for the AP work has been developed and is available. A Drafting Committee is being formed. Cooperative work of the Working Group with the U.S. National Science Digital Library (NSDL) in vocabulary development is also underway. A link is provided on the Working Group Wiki to that project. In preparation for the work on the Application Profile as well as other deliverables for the year set in Shanghai, the Working Group has established a Wiki.
In the next six months, work on the DC-Education Application Profile will continue. The group will work with IEEE LOM partners in planning education-related events at DC-2005.
The current workplan includes working on identifying measures of success when implementing metadata and Dublin Core. This is being done by creating a bibliography of current literature on the topic, surveying the list for input, outlining and then developing a presentation that could be made available for use by individuals within the corporate world in order to promote metadata use and Dublin Core. The group also plans to organize and sponsor a pre-conference workshop for DC-2005.
To date, a working bibliography has been compiled by Paula Land and posted to the corporate Wiki. It is intended to be a work in progress which the group can augment. A discussion is taking place among a group of volunteers regarding how a presentation ought to be structured and what points it should address. The outline of such a presentation has also been posted to the Wiki. Joseph Busch has analyzed the groups mailing list in order to better understand what sort of organizations are represented by various group members. This information will inform volunteers on whether to develop a vertical-specific set of presentation or a single, more generic one that can be tailored to a number of different corporate environments. He has posted a summary as well as some statistics about this to the Wiki.
Discussions regarding a possible pre-conference workshop have begun between the chair and Arthur Haynes. A possible theme that has been proposed is "Metadata and Digital Asset Management", and the proposed format would be a day-long workshop with a variety of presenters. We plan to develop more of a description, discuss potential involvement with a number of people who could present, and articulate more details as necessary. We plan to draw on the experience of previous workshop coordinators in order to better understand the process and plan for this workshop. We also plan to take the Advisory Board up on its offer of assistance as we move forward in coordinating this workshop.
Key items for the 2004-2005 workplan were identified as:
A continual issue for the Working Group remains the difficulty in identifying issues that are purely of concern to e-Government programs. While the work items identified do have implications for other sectors, they were selected as areas of particular significance to Government programs as they operate in practice.
The Government Working Group met at DC-2004 in Shanghai, with 14 delegates in attendance. Minutes of the meeting are available here and on the Working Group Web page. The meeting reviewed progress with major items on the work plan, and provided a valuable sharing of experiences.
Since the meeting there has been renewed interest in finalizing the Government application profile. As understanding of the application profile model has developed, and an increasing number of governments have articulated their discovery metadata requirements, this appears both more important and achievable than previously. It is hoped to progress the profile over the coming six months.
The Kernel/ERC group is pursuing a six-point workplan that includes formally documenting kernel metadata, implementing an open process for publishing new vocabulary terms, creating open source software tools, and developing best practice guidelines.
Documentation has moved forward with the publication of two new Internet Drafts that define two aspects of the ERC syntax substrate for kernel metadata. The first, "A Name-Value Language (ANVL)" (Kunze, Kahle, Masanes, Mohr), proposes a basic ERC record structure minus element semantics. The second, "Temporal Enumerated Ranges (TEMPER)" (Kunze), proposes a new date/time format. It may be of interest that the application that gave rise to ERCs, namely electronic permanence, has also spawned a tool ("noid") for generating persistent identifiers that communicates using ANVL.
A face-to-face Working Group meeting at the DC-2004 conference in Shanghai. The presentation and recommendations from that meeting are available.
Two open source search engines that can index, search, and transform Kernel/ERC metadata are now referenced from the working group home page. The first is "Amberfish", and is due to the efforts of working group member Nassib Nassar. The second is "Isite2", thanks to working group member Archie Warnock; it includes a demonstration site and Z39.50 server settings.
Related to usage and best practice guidelines, some evaluation of Kernel metadata in MLIS graduate student projects has been conducted at the University of North Carolina (UNC) with Jane Greenberg, and the University of North Texas (UNT) with Bill Moen. UNC students are looking at the DC Kernel in the context of metadata models, architectures, and applications. The UNT students will be making available comparable sets of resource citations marked up in qualified Dublin Core and in ERC.
The next six months anticipates further results from university-level metadata instructional experiences, continuing development of the kernel vocabulary, and refactoring of the current ERC specification in light of the ANVL and TEMPER specifications. Feedback from deployment in several maturing projects is expected to shed light on the efficacy of current approaches.
The three main items in the current workplan, which can be seen in the report from the Shanghai meeting, concern the DC Library Application Profile.
Work has been put in hand on the updates to the profile and it should be ready to submit for the Spring meeting of the Usage Board. A draft of the XML schema has been produced. Several issues have been identified that need discussion and resolution relating to: using DC XML Schemas; mixing terms taken from different data models; limitations imposed by XML schemas. Discussion of these issues is currently taking place on the DC-Libraries and DC-Architecture lists.
A further item in the work plan relates to the creation of guidance documentation and it is hoped commence this work before the conference in Madrid. Volunteers from the working group will be needed to undertake sections of this work.
This Working Group is primarily a forum for individuals and organizations from international communities to share information and knowledge gained from experiences in their local or domain-specific applications of Dublin Core with the global community, and especially for those where non-English languages are their primary language. Major issues of the Working Group's interests include translations of DCMI terms into local languages and collecting/sharing local requirements and adoption of DC to local resources. Working Group members can also provide multilingual perspectives to current DC issues. Cooperation with other Working Groups, especially the Registry Working Group to collect translations of DCMI terms and related information, is crucial. Periodically the Working Group will do an environmental scan of DC implementations. See charter at the Group's Web page.
This Working Group does not have a formal work plan. The Working Group has continued its activities through 2004 by active participation of its members at the Dublin Core Working Group meeting at DC-2004. There were session presentations and discussions on multilingual aspects of Dublin Core, including the DC Registry and digital library projects. The results of the 2004 Questionnaire on DCMES : standards - translations - will shortly be made available.
In 2005, this Working Group will review its Open Issues and Related work documentation. An academic journal has shown interest in publishing works presented at the DCMI Localization and Internationalization Working Group special session in Shanghai, October 2004 as a special issue of the journal. A preliminary invitation has been sent to the speakers to submit their paper for the special issue to the Working Group Chairs.
This Working Group is functioning largely as a sounding board for discussion of the use of Identifiers in metadata. There are no work items on the group's agenda and the list has been largely silent in recent months. There are currently discussions underway for a joint European/US workshop on identifiers, and this is expected to trigger some discussion on the list.
There has not been much active development of the Registry software in the past 6 months. The Registry is considered to be in a 'mature and stable' state. If anything, it is slightly ahead of the need for such software. The chairs suggest to pause and let the demand for this type of application grow before investing further in it. Of course, any problems with the software that are identified will be addressed, as will new functionality deemed critical.
One related item that may be worth noting is a paper on Metadata Registries, co-written by Stu Weibel and Harry Wagner and submitted to the Journal of Digital Information (JoDI) for publication.
The Working Group has installed a Wiki and will focus on the following for the next year:
The workplan for 2005-2005 contains two items:
Activities in the workplan haven't started yet. The MMI-DC 2004 workplan is just finished including several new documents. At the ISO TC46/SC4 (Technical Committee Information and Documentation - Subcommittee Technical Interoperability) meeting end October 2004 a report of DCMI as Maintenance Agency for Dublin Core was presented.
NISO has announced 5 years review of the NISO Standard ANSI/NISO Z39.85-2001: Dublin Core Metadata Element Set. Preparation of this is a work item for the Working Group in 2005.
After the Advisory Board meeting in Shanghai in October 2004, Harry Wagner of OCLC and Thomas Severiens of the Institute for Science Networking in Oldenburg have taken on the task of co-chairing this group.
The Working Group is actively developing a new charter and agenda for the coming year. In preparation of this a working group meeting has been scheduled for 2 March 2005 in Göttingen, Germany.
The DCMI Advisory Board, in its meeting on 15 October 2004 in Shanghai, decided to de-activate this working group.
The Working Group reaffirmed that the scope of the Glossary needed to remain Dublin Core specific. Glossary entries would be based on terms found on the DCMI Web pages, terms found in the literature concerning Dublin Core, and that the terms should attempt to provide insight into the process as well as the "product" for example, harvesting and harvester. Corey Harper has re-organized the Bibliography so that the most current articles or books are at the top of the web page. He will continue to collect.
The Committee discussed the creation of Best Practices Documents that would live under User Documentation. We should host the Library Application Profile under the User Guide; however, the Libraries Working Group would be responsible for the content development and updating.
Corey Harper is continuing to scan publications for appropriate citations. Diane Hillmann is working on updating the User Guide. Mary Woodley needs to write definitions for the terms above, send them to the Usage Board for approval.
Entries for Provenance and Accessibility will be added to the User Guide. Several new terms will be added to the Glossary.
Terms will be submitted by 1 March 2005. Terms will be added to the Glossary on the Web and will be sent to the mailing list. Discussion will be on the Wiki in April 2005. A discussion concerning collecting good examples of Best Practices or the creation of one to accompany the User Guide will be started in Summer 2005.
The CEN/ISSS Workshop on Dublin Core metadata completed its work program in February 2005 with the submission of the following texts to be published as CEN Workshop Agreements in the near future:
DC-2005, the International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications 2005, will be held from 12 through 15 September at the University Carlos III of Madrid in Leganés (Madrid). The conference theme this year is "Metadata Vocabularies in Practice". More information is available from the Conference Web site.
On 28 February 2005, the general mailing list DC-General had 993 subscribers, an increase of 1% compared to March 2004. The total number of subscriptions to the active DCMI Working Groups (not counting DC-General) was 2,252, also an increase of 1% in one year. The largest Working Groups are: DCMI Libraries (357 subscribers), DCMI Education (265), DCMI Government (183), DCMI Architecture (156) and, ex aequo, DCMI Environment and DCMI Collection Description (131).
The average number of unique visitors to the DCMI Web site since October 2004 is around 60,000 per month, up from the average of around 50,000 per month in summer 2004. The average number of visits to the Web site per month increased steeply from around 90,000 in April-September 2004 to around 140,000 per month between October 2004 and February 2005.