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Makx Dekkers/2009-09-21
On 18 February 2009, the International Organization for Standardization ISO published ISO 15836:2009 Information and documentation -- The Dublin Core metadata element set, a revised version of ISO 15826:2003, bringing it in line with the latest status of the reference version of the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set available from the DCMI Web site.
On 1 May 2009, the document "Interoperability Levels for Dublin Core Metadata" was published as a DCMI Recommended resource. The document discusses modeling choices involved in designing metadata applications for different types of interoperability. At Level 1, applications use data components with shared natural-language definitions. At Level 2, data is based on the formal-semantic model of the W3C Resource Description Framework (as in Linked Data). At Levels 3 and 4, data also shares syntactic constraints based on the DCMI Abstract Model. The document aims at providing a point of reference for evaluating interoperability among a variety of metadata implementations.
On 18 May 2009, revised "Guidelines for Dublin Core Application Profiles" by Karen Coyle and Thomas Baker has been published as a DCMI Recommended Resource. Aimed at a broad audience of application profile developers, the document walks through the process of creating a simple profile, using examples to illustrate key components and metadata design principles.
The task group has not progressed over the past year on its goal of comparing FOAF to functional requirements for agent description. The TG members note with interest the high profile of the FOAF community and recent developments in refining the FOAF specification. While recognizing that general guidance on agent description is desirable and often requested in the DCMI community, the TG members believe that current initiatives with the Semantic Web and Linked Data will cater for those needing to incorporate agent descriptions in description sets. Accordingly, the TG members propose that this Task Group be closed down.
Under the banner of "structured data" for "search engine optimization", recent developments from Yahoo and Google and in content management platforms such as Drupal have provided new channels for the publication of vast amounts of data in the style of "Level Two" (Linked Data) — a trend that is driving the development of new tools and techniques for metadata applications. Since DC-2008 in Berlin, RDFa — a mark-up language for embedding RDF data in Web pages — has become a W3C Recommendation, and RDFa has become a topic of discussion on the dc-architecture mailing list. "Semantic Interoperability of Linked Data" is the theme for the DC-2009 conference in Seoul, and Linked Data is expected to attract growing attention in the Architecture Forum over the coming year.
Pending the resolution and final testing of a minor technical issue raised in Public Comment, the DCMI Proposed Recommendation "Expressing Dublin Core Description Sets using XML (DC-DS-XML)" by Pete Johnston and Andy Powell is expected to be published as a DCMI Recommendation in October 2009. The DC-DS-XML guidelines provide a straightforward serialization of all features of the Description Set Model, part of the DCMI Abstract Model.
A member of the dc-architecture mailing list, Julian Reschke, has pointed out that the 1999 IETF informational document, RFC 2731 "Encoding Dublin Core Metadata in HTML", is now technically out of step with the 2008 DCMI Recommendation "Expressing Dublin Core metadata using HTML/XHTML meta and link elements". With approval from DCMI, Julian has submitted to IETF a proposal that RFC 2731 be reclassified as Historic, with pointers to current ongoing work in DCMI.
Discussion on the dc-architecture list has recently focused on issues related to the deployment of the Description Set Profile specification for Dublin Core application profiles. A working draft by Karen Coyle identifies a handful of "application profile design patterns" as a basis for boilerplate templates and, potentially, for metadata creation tools.
The Task Group has been facing some difficult challenges in the past six months, which we aim to find our way past, given the enthusiastic input we've had from many community members during the requirements-gathering phase of the past three years.
Finding volunteers with sufficient time to give remains a problem, and this is exacerbated by the need to remain engaged with other educational metadata initiatives (namely IEEE LOM and ISO MLR). While we have been temporarily held up by these issues, we feel there is still potential value in producing an AP for education-related properties using the Singapore Framework. What we need most is the capacity to stay connected to the above-mentioned standards bodies, while maintaining involvement from the communities that will use the AP in completing it, and testing its usefulness. Therefore, we have the following plans for the next 6 months:
At DC-2008 the Government community has decided to close the work on the DC-GAP in order to define a version 1.0. The work plan for the DC-GAP will be revised and version 1.0 of the DC-GAP will be published before DC-2009.
The DCMI/IEEE LISC Taskforce, chaired by Mikael Nilsson, was installed in 2005 to support the development of joint specifications for harmonizing IEEE LOM (Learning Object Metadata) and Dublin Core.
The task force is currently preparing two IEEE Specifications for joint publishing by the IEEE and DCMI: one RDF vocabulary for LOM Elements, and one Recommended Practice for expressing LOM metadata using the DCMI Abstract Model.
In December 2008, the task force published a complete draft on the task force wiki.
During the coming months, this draft will be prepared for formal balloting within the IEEE. Comment can be submitted through the task force mailing list, linked from the wiki.
The Kernel Metadata Task Group members has continued to meet roughly once a month, moving steadily towards a profile determined by a combination documentation and software. At the end of April 2009 the group affirmed draft 1.2 of the Kernel / ERC (Electronic Resource Citation) specification, revised with an interoperability section stating that Kernel metadata as used in the ERC conforms to "Level 1" DCMI interoperability, as per the Interoperability Levels document published in November 2008.
In pursuing "Level 2" interoperability, the group investigated target transformations from both the short and long variant forms of the ERC and defined requirements for automated creation of an equivalent "Turtle" (a brief expression of RDF) record. Open-source software to do this processing is now publically available (and still under development); the latest version will always be found at http://search.cpan.org/dist/File-ERC/. The group's current hypothesis is that a strong mapping to RDF from the ERC and its required Kernel elements will provide the firmest possible proof of interoperation.
In May 2009, the revision of the DC Libraries page went online. Since July 2009 we support the DC-Lib AP Task Group to revise the DC-Lib AP and we are organizing a workshop to discuss the results of this process at DC-2009. We are also organizing a Libraries Community meeting at DC-2009.
The DCMI RDA Task Group has been very busy finalizing the registration of the RDA Element sets and vocabularies, with a completion date aimed at the beta testing of the RDA Online tools at the end of August 2009. Funding originally provided by the British Library and Siderean Software ran out in March 2009 so work has continued on a volunteer basis. A list of the Element Sets can be found at: http://metadataregistry.org/rdabrowse.htm.
The registration effort has been a challenge on many fronts. Diane Hillmann provided a presentation at the American Library Association about the challenges and decisions during the registration process (the slides are available here: http://www.slideshare.net/smartbroad/registering-the-rda-vocabularies-1734427).
Other dissemination activity includes a number of presentations by Gordon Dunsire, featuring the work of the Task Group, to the following groups:
The FRBR Review Group which maintains the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records model re-affirmed its desire to liaise with the Task Group when it met at IFLA's World Library and Information Congress 2009. The project to develop and register RDF representations of FRBR entities and relationships is expected to be completed within the next few months; coordination with the development of the RDA Online tools is essential. Gordon Dunsire was elected to membership of the Review Group.
We have arranged a meeting for the DCMI Conference in Seoul. We also invited many community members to take part in an event in York in July 2009. Diane Hillmann and Jon Phipps were invited over from the US to take part. Due mostly to financial pressures we were forced to make this an invitation-only event, but nonetheless individuals from the DCMI- and learning metadata communities attended. The event was a practical success, giving rise to many practical proposals for implementation of solutions on the basis of existing registries, and support for the community.
Corey Harper is working with us on the Registry Task Group work, and has recently completed a survey of the area, which he is now writing up into a report that can be presented in Seoul. We have also made good progress on the specific subject of interoperability, having successfully implemented a 'rough and ready' three-way transform between DCMI Registry, NSDL Registry and IEMSR RDF formats as a result of decisions made in York. Jon Phipps has also sketched out an approach that may be taken in the longer term, and again this will be presented in Seoul.
In the next period we hope to look at the practical proposals that have been brought up both by the recent survey and by participants at the York event, in order to use them as use cases for practical development based on the work that has recently been completed.
As mentioned above, the ISO standard ISO 15826 was been revised formally based on the 2007 revision of ANSI/NISO Z39.85. Although DCMI is not the formal Maintenance Agency for the standard, DCMI is mentioned as the primary information resource for further information on Dublin Core.
The moderator of the DCMI Standards Community handled the contacts with ISO in finalizing the revision and publication on 18 February 2009 of ISO 15836:2009.
The goal of the DCMI Translation Task Group is to ensure quality in the translation of DCMI terms to different languages and to do this by establishing guidelines and best practice to assist translators.
A Mediawiki has been established for the DCMI Translation Task Group with kind support from the Encyclopedia of Iranian Architectural History. The wiki can be found at: http://eiah.org/dcwiki/index.php.
The DCMI Translation Task Group wiki contains a work plan and the developing guidelines. The Task Group welcomes participation in this wiki community by those with an interest in translating DCMI terms and DCMI documentation.
The DCMI Usage Board was pleased to see the publication of a revised version of the International Standard ISO 15836 by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in February 2009.
At its most recent meeting, in Berlin, the DCMI Usage Board resolved to coordinate with the AGLS on the development of a DCMI property and related AGLS value encoding scheme to express the "accessibility" of a resource. (AGLS maintains the standard "AGLS Metadata Terms", AS5044). As of early September 2009, discussion continues.
At its next annual face-to-face meeting at the DC-2009 conference in Seoul, the Usage Board will focus on the review of legacy usage guidelines targeted at newcomers and beginners in the use of Dublin Core metadata.
In the course of 2009, three new members of the DCMI Oversight Committee were appointed: Schubert Foo (representing the National Library Board Singapore), and the independent members Samantha Starmer and Mike Teets. Lorcan Dempsey stepped down on his own request after almost 8 years of membership of the DCMI Board of Trustees (2002-2008) and the DCMI Oversight Committee since late 2008.
On the DCMI Advisory Board Javier Solorio of the University of Colima, Mexico replaced Lourdes Feria of the same institution, while Harry Wagner stepped down on his own request.
The Advisory Board now consists of 52 experts from 18 countries: Australia, Belgium, China, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Sweden, Singapore, the UK and the US.
On the first of April 2009, the National Library of Korea renewed its Membership of DCMI for another three years until 31 March 2012.
In June 2009, Infocom Corporation of Japan renewed its Platinum Partnership status for another year starting 1 July 2009.
Please see the Platinum Partner page for more details. The DCMI Partnership Program is open for all companies and organizations that want to support DCMI financially to continue its work to the benefit of the global audience.
DC-2009, the ninth International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications, will be hosted by the National Library of Korea in cooperation with the Korean Library Association at the National Digital Library in Seoul, Korea, from 12 through 16 October 2009.
This year's program includes introductory tutorials by Tom Baker and Marcia Lei Zeng; keynotes by Michael Crandall, Eunchul Lee and Alistair Miles; eight full papers and five project reports; three special sessions on functional, technical and strategic issues related to Linked Data; meetings of the DCMI Communities Localization & Internationalization, Libraries, Registry and Science & Metadata; and advanced tutorials by Sam Oh and Marcia Lei Zeng.
At the end of August 2009, the general mailing list DC-General had 873 subscribers. The total number of subscriptions to the active DCMI mailing lists (not counting DC-General) increased from 2,754 to 2,971 in the period over the last twelve months, an increase of almost 8%. The largest groups are: DCMI Libraries Community (323 subscribers), DCMI Education Community (310), DCMI Scholarly Communications Community (202), DCMI Architecture Forum (209) and DCMI Science and Metadata Community (170).
The most accessed documents on the DCMI Web site are the DCMI Metadata Terms (average of 7,442 accesses per month in the last 12 months), the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set, version 1.1 (7,403), Using Dublin Core (3,840), the Documents page (3,071) and the Tools and Software page (2,156).
DCMI now has a presence on Twitter. There is also a Facebook group for DCMI and a Facebook page for the DC-2009 conference.
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