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 June. The list is not exhaustive, and comments and queries are welcomed.
Events attended
- At the start of June, I attended a meeting of the BIC Product Metadata Group. One of the topics of discussion was the unveiling of
the international version of ONIX, a standard
developed in the US last year to allow exchange of quality information
between publishers, Amazon, etc.
- Also that week, we held the educational metadata meeting in
London. Bruce Royan of SCRAN, a member of this committee, Chaired, and
Resource kindly provided a venue. Many of the main players in the UK
educational sector were present, and the meeting resulted in a good body of
collaborative work for us to move forward on. We also agreed to set up an
electronic mailing list, and to establish
the UK's Metadata for Education Group.
I've received a lot of interested queries from people who weren't there...
- I was invited to the British Library to attend a seminar on Inter Library
Loan. The BL, and others, are looking at ways to restructure the current ILL
process, and are keen to develop a co-operative solution which maximises the
use of existing book resources at the BL and elsewhere.
- I attended the JISC/CNI conference in Stratford for three days.
- Towards the end of July, I travelled to Ottawa as a guest of the National
Library of Canada. I was there to talk with them about
their current programme to construct a Canadian Digital Library. I also
spoke with some of their Government metadata people, and there were some
interesting moves towards greater collaboration between the National Library
and CHIN - the Canadian Heritage Information Network -
whilst I was there, too... :-)
- Back from Canada, I travelled to London for the first meeting of the
Steering Group of the BL/JISC/RSLP-funded UK National Union Catalogue
(UKNUC) Scoping Study. This study is exploring the
need (or otherwise) for a UK union catalogue, and looking at whether such a
thing should be physical (like COPAC), virtual (using Z39.50, like a clump),
or some mixture of the two.
- Finally in June, I travelled to the Netherlands for the second Maastricht
McLuhan Institute summer school. Last year, I spoke on Z39.50 et al., but
this year I was invited along simply to contribute at appropriate
moments.
In Progress
- Alicia Wise, the JISC Collections Manager, and I continue to work on a
paper to
explain what vendors need to do in order to plug into the DNER.
- We're checking dates and venues for the Interoperability workshop, to be
held in London in November.
- Work is underway on a HEFCE-funded study for the e-University, which is
due for delivery to HEFCE by 7 July.
- The educational metadata meeting resulted in a lot of actions, listed in
the minutes. The
main one to which attention will be devoted in the short term is the
drafting of the MEG Concord.
- To supplement the NOF Technical Standards and Guidelines (below), UKOLN
are drawing up a programme for five briefing workshops to be held in
September.
Publications
Monthly News