This page is based upon text submitted to the Interoperability Focus Advisory Committee, and represents a number of the main activities in the month of March. The list is not exhaustive, and comments and queries are welcomed.
Events attended
- Early this month, I attended a meeting of JISC's Committee for Electronic Information (JCEI), which is responsible for providing half of my funding. I was there to give a presentation on what the Focus has been up to for the past year.
- I also attended a Concertation Day for the Electronic Libraries
Programme, which looked at issues related to Collection Level Description. I chaired the afternoon session. There were a number of outcomes from this
meeting, including the special issue of D-Lib Magazine, mentioned again
below.
- I attended two meetings of the new Metadata Working Group of the
Information Age Government Champions, chaired by the Cabinet Office. This
group is working to prepare guidelines for the public sector's electronic
presence, and is closely related to the evolving Government portal
(previously me.gov, probably now uk-online), and yesterday's publication of the e-Government strategy. Guidelines are due from this group in the next month or so, and there is quite a bit of UKOLN input at the moment, with my attendance at these meetings and Andy Powell, Lorcan and myself meeting with Jeremy Crump from the Cabinet Office as well...
- Some more time this month was spent on marking bids to JISC's 5/99
funding call, and there was a further meeting of the marking committee
- At the end of the month, I flew to Vancouver to teach the latest CIMI
Institute on metadata for cultural heritage organisations. I taught with
Robin Dowden, from the Walker Art Centre in Minneapolis.
Happenings
- Following the JCEI meeting, JISC agreed to continue its involvement in the Consortium for the Computer Interchange of Museum Information (CIMI -
http://www.cimi.org/), previously handled through a combination of AHDS and UKOLN effort. Interoperability Focus is now to join CIMI on JISC's behalf, but at the higher level of Executive Committee member, alongside the Smithsonian, CNI, RLG, CHIN, the Getty, and Mystic Seaport. My first Executive Committee meeting will be in May.
Publications
In Progress
- Following the eLib Concertation Day on Collection Level Description, D-Lib Magazine (http://www.dlib.org/) has agreed to a special issue on the topic. This will be published in September 2000, and I am currently finalising the list of papers.
- Following the latest Advisory Committee meeting, and some postings to the Committee from Bruce Royan (SCRAN) and Matthew Stiff (mda), I am exploring the feasibility of calling a meeting of those organisations working with educational metadata in the UK. I hope to start inviting people in the next few days.
- Following some discussion with the JISC Collections Manager, Alicia and I are working on a short paper to explain what vendors need to do in order to fit in with the Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER)
- I am writing pieces for the next issue of Ariadne on identifiers (to
celebrate JISC joining the DOI Foundation), and "interoperability for
dummies"
- I need to do some more on the workshops for later this year, as discussed at the last Advisory Committee meeting. Minutes from that meeting are also due.
- As discussed at the last Advisory Committee meeting, UKOLN are considering the feasibility of extending the current 'Public Library People' register to become 'GLAM People' (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums). The current service, at http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/public/people/, builds upon UKOLN work in PRIDE, and allows searching for people via the web and from within many e-mail programs (see http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/public/people/outlook.html, for example). We hope to work out what's feasible within existing staff resources in the near future, and I'll keep you all informed...
New Memberships
- With JISC joining CIMI, I am now a member of the CIMI Executive Committee
- I have joined the new Metadata Working Group of the Information Age
Government Champions, chaired by the UK Government's Cabinet Office.
- I have joined BSI IDT/2/18, a committee of the British Standards Institute addressing issues related to standard identifiers (DOIs and stuff) and metadata
- I have been invited to join BSI/DISC IST/43, a committee of the British Standards Institute looking at Learning Technology
- I have been invited to join ISO TC46, SC 4 WG 7, whilst they review ISO standard 2146, which looks at directory description of library-based
collections.
Monthly News