Collection Description Schema Forum

Recommendations February 2004

The CD Focus Schema Forum was held on Thursday 12th February 2004 at the CBI Conference Centre in London. The purpose of the day was to provide an opportunity for implementers and policy makers to review the progress that has been made in the creation of collection-level descriptions, including the different implementations of the RSLP CD schema, the proposed CD Application Profile (DC CD AP), emerging from the work of the Dublin Core Collection Description Working Group (DC CD WG) and in the light of these developments strategies for future.

In the afternoon the delegates broke into three groups to discuss recommendations for the future. The main questions to address were:

Where do we want to be in two years time?
What requirements is/are standard(s) designed to meet?
Should we work with two standards?
If there is to be a new version of the RSLP schema what are the implications with regard to naming, responsibility for maintenance, and registration with an appropriate standards body?

All groups reported back. Andy Powell (UKOLN) summarised the discussion outcomes. The main points were as follows:

Future activity will need to be carried out in the international/global arena, not just UK.
DCMI & NISO are candidates through which to carry out further standardisation.
In order to facilitate this work, UK organisations need to get involved with DCMI and NISO.
UK funding and national bodies need to find ways to support DCMI and NISO and to fund UK participation in these organisations.
Through activities with DCMI and NISO, encourage them to work together; e.g. NISO endorsement of DC CD AP
Current DC activity not rich enough to support functional requirements for collection description (e.g. within Metasearch initiative). Probably need 2 schemas, ideally one being a subset of the other.
Institutional and funding bodies need to be more aware of when they are working with collection descriptions (e.g. directories of libraries, museums, etc.).
Implementers feel they need more support and guidance on implementation. Needs to be funding to provide the support and guidance.

It was further suggested that JISC pursue discussions with IMLS (Institute of Museum Library Services - represented at the Forum by Tim Cole and Sarah Shreeves from University of Illinois Ubana Champaign) - regarding possible collaborative work.

Content by: Ann Chapman of UKOLN.
Page last revised on: 11-Mar-2004
Email comments to: web-support@ukoln.ac.uk