Monthly News

Events attended

• At the start of the month, Brian Kelly (UK Web Focus, also at UKOLN) and I gave a paper to the Library Association conference in Manchester.
• Whilst in Manchester, I took the opportunity to visit one of JISC's three key data centres, MIMAS, and spent the day discussing the range of services they offer, and some of the challenges in making them interoperable. MIMAS, like the other two centres, holds a broad range of resources, including map data, satellite imagery, chemical compound information, census data and related survey data sets, and significant digitised journal content from a variety of publishers.
• Also early in the month, I attended a technical meeting for the 'clump' projects funded by JISC's Electronic Libraries (eLib) Programme. These clumps are collections of libraries, brought together either because of geography or subject matter, and include the RIDING libraries in Yorkshire, CAIRNS in Scotland, the M25 Link in London, and Music Libraries Online. The clumps use Z39.50 to tie their resources together, and are on the cutting edge in terms of addressing many Z39.50-related problems here in the UK. At the meeting, we discussed the way in which the clumps are sharing development effort on making one particular set of Z39.50 tools (Europagate) more useful, and I provided a report on the status of work towards an International Profile for Z39.50 which the clumps would be able to benefit from.
• I attended the <indecs> project conference in London, where the extremely valuable work on the <indecs> data model was debated. This work, whilst grounded in many years' of practical experience, remains largely theoretical at present, and it will be important to remain abreast of developments which seek to align this model of rights and commerce with activities elsewhere in related sectors.
• I spoke at a workshop on Digital Cultural Heritage, organized by the Amsterdam/Maastricht Summer University, and hosted by the Maastricht McLuhan Institute in the Netherlands. Other speakers included Pat Young from CHIN in Canada and Derek Law from the University of Strathclyde.
• I gave a short presentation on Z39.50 and the evolving International Profile to a meeting of JISC-funded services in London. This meeting was intended to inform these services about what would be required for them to participate in the Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER), and to gain their feedback on the proposed standards and a number of funding mechanisms available to them.
• I assisted Rosemary Russell and Tracy Gardner in setting up a meeting to discuss the MODELS Information Architecture. As mentioned at the last Advisory Committee, a study is being undertaken to make MIA more useful to a wider audience, and to tie it into a number of real systems. Attendees at the meeting in London included those with functioning systems (like the BBC) and those on the verge of specifying a new system.
• I met with Debra Parr, who is working at EARL on a pilot study for UK Public Libraries called the UK Electronic Library. We discussed a number of the issues related to using current interoperable technologies in an environment such as that found in the public library sector.
• I attended my first meeting of the mda Board.

Work in Progress

• Work continues on the 'Information Landscapes' document, with a focus newly redefined following the last Advisory Committee meeting.
• Work on the much-discussed Z39.50 Interoperability Profile has now accelerated, and JISC have made funds available for a meeting to be held in Bath later in August. This meeting is being organized by myself, Carrol Lunau from the National Library of Canada, and Bill Moen from the University of North Texas (both committee members). A web site for the meeting is available, and I would hope to have something to report on the resulting document in my next report.
• In the Dublin Core community, the revised definitions for the elements have been out for a period of peer review. Comments have been extremely useful, including detailed input from an ISO technical committee. A number of us are now examining these comments.
• Also in Dublin Core, a survey to find the ways in which various projects currently 'qualify' their Dublin Core ended this weekend. As Chair of the Coverage group, I have summarised findings for that element, and we can now begin to work on a 'sensible' list of core qualifiers which is agreeable to as many groups as possible.
• I am working on a paper, "Z39.50 for Dummies", for the next issue of Ariadne. This paper is due later this month.
• Along with a small group of others, I am looking at ways in which Dublin Core might be more clearly associated with the LOM model from IEEE, which forms the basis of the IMS educational metadata standard.