News from 2013

On 12 September, DCMI launched its Individual Member program. In addition to Individual Members financially supporting the work of DCMI, they also enjoy the benefits of reduced registration fees for the International Conference on Dublin Core™ and Metadata Applications and webinars and tutorials. Regular Individual Memberships are available for practicing professionals as well as a Student category. Retired professionals can join at the Student rate. Organizational memberships remain available for Regional, Institutional and Supporting members. For details of membership, see Join/Support.

The collocated conferences for DC-2013 and iPRES-2013 in Lisbon attracted 392 participants from over 37 countries. In addition to the Tuesday through Thursday conference days comprised of peer-reviewed paper and special sessions, 223 participants attended pre-conference tutorials and 246 participated in post-conference workshops for the collocated events. The peer-reviewed papers and presentations are available on the conference website Presentation page. In sum, it was a great conference.

A NISO/DCMI Webinar with Johannes Keizer and Caterina Caracciolo will be held online at 1:00PM Eastern Time on 25 September 2013 (17:00 UTC - see World Clock: http://bit.ly/18LAQwh). Open data is a crucial prerequisite for inventing and disseminating the innovative practices needed for agricultural development. To be usable, data must not just be open in principle -- i.e., covered by licenses that allow re-use. Data must also be published in a technical form that allows it to be integrated into a wide range of applications. While the webinar focuses on AGRIS, a central and widely-used resource linking agricultural datasets for easy consumption, and AgriDrupal, an adaptation of the popular, open-source content management system Drupal optimized for producing and consuming linked datasets, the issues and approaches addressed are applicable across a broad array of similar open data contexts. This webinar describes the technical solutions adopted by a widely diverse global network of agricultural research institutes for publishing research results. Additional information can be found at http://www.niso.org/news/events/2013/dcmi/developing/. Registration for the webinar closes 25 September 2013 at 12:00PM Eastern (16:00 UTC).

The DCMI-AsiaPac workshop titled "RDA, DC and Linked Data" takes place in Singapore on 15 August in conjunction with IFLA World Library and Information Congress 2013. Karen Coyle will lead the morning session of the workshop and will introduce attendees to the basics of Linked Data, including important vocabulary and concepts. Using familiar examples, participants will build some linked data together and will end with a survey of Linked Data projects in the library community. Sam Oh will lead the afternoon session and will examine converting MARC records and other forms of structured data into Linked Data including the processes of mapping existing data elements to RDF properties and classes and linking to sources of Linked Data authorities such as DBPedia for subject headings and people. Additional information on the workshop can be found at http://dcevents.dublincore.org/index.php/BibData/ap2013.

The RDF representations of the vocabularies created in 2007 to support the Dublin Core™ Collections Application Profile [1] have been updated. The Accrual Method [2], Accrual Policy [3], and Frequency [4] vocabularies are now declared as SKOS Concept Schemes. These vocabularies (and their PURLs), along with Collection Description Terms [5] and the Collection Description Type vocabulary [6], fall under DCMI's policy for the persistence of formal documents and machine-readable schemas published on the DCMI website [7].

The Conference Committee of DC-2013 has published the final program of the event. On Monday, 2 September, there will be four half-day Tutorials in parallel tracks with Ivan Herman, Steven Mill, Kai Eckert and Daniel Garijo. The conference on Tuesday through Thursday, 3-5 September, includes three keynotes, paper sessions, project reports, posters, and an array of special sessions. Friday, 6 September is devoted to two full-day workshops: (1) CAMP-4-Data (Cyberinfrastructure and Metadata Protocols); and (2) VocDay 2013 (Managing Vocabularies). You can show your interest at Lanyrd. Twitter stream at @dcmi13, hashtag #dcmi13. Registration is now open. Day registrations are available.

Online registration for DC-2013 in Lisbon is now open at http://ipres2013.ist.utl.pt/registration.html. DC-2013 and iPRES-2013 are collocated and run in parallel. During the event, delegates are welcome to choose sessions that best fit their interests from either conference . Keynotes are held in common plenaries, and, social events are common, providing a excellent opportunity for DCMI and iPRES delegates to socialize, share common interests and network.

The organizing committee of DC-2013 (http://purl.org/dcevents/dc-2013) has published the preliminary program of the event. On Monday, 2 September there will be four half-day tutorials in two parallel tracks. The program for the conference on Tuesday through Thursday, 3-5 September, includes keynotes and paper sessions, posters and four special sessions. On Friday, 6 September, two full-day workshops will address Managing Vocabularies (VocDay) and Cyber-infrastructure and Metadata Protocols (CAMP-4-Data) for scientific data. DC-2013 is collocated with iPRES and delegates can choose from sessions offered by both conferences. You can show your interest at Lanyrd. Twitter stream at @dcmi13, hashtag #dcmi13. DC-2013 and iPRES share a common registration that is now open at http://ipres2013.ist.utl.pt/registration.html.

On 30 June 2013, DCMI reaches a significant milestone in its history when it ceases operations in Singapore as a company limited by guarantee and starts the next phase of its development as a project of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIST). DCMI and ASIST share a common goal to advance the "research that drives and the practices that sustain new developments". The decision to restructure was motivated by the desire of DCMI's governing Oversight Committee to shape a more dynamic and responsive institutional structure, while retaining DCMI's proven mission, goals and objectives and its commitments to an open, consensus-driven community. ASIST has a 75 year history of excellence, beginning as the American Documentation Institute (ADI) in 1937. ADI became ASIS (American Society for Information Science) in 1968 and then ASIST with the addition of "Technology" to its name in 2000. In 2013, ASIST dropped "American" from it's name and became the Association for Information Science and Technology to better reflect its growing international agenda and membership. A fuller description of the new DCMI/ASIST partnership can be found at http://dublincore.org/about/reshaping/.

DCMI is please to announce that the Information School of the University of Washington in Seattle, USA, has joined DCMI as the inaugural Institutional Member in the Initiative's revised membership programs. As a leading member of the iSchool movement, the University of Washington Information School is a model for other information schools around the globe. Assistant Professor Joseph T. Tennis will represent the Information School on the DCMI Oversight Committee. Regional, Institutional and Supporting members of DCMI are pivotal to guaranteeing the continuing contributions of DCMI to the metadata community. Information about the revised membership programs is available at http://dublincore.org/about/membershipPrograms/.