General Announcements

, The DCMI Directorate is pleased to announce that the National Library of Korea has decided to join the DCMI Affiliate Program on the first of April 2006. Korea will be the fifth Affiliate in the program which already includes Finland, the United Kingdom, Singapore and New Zealand, further extending the global reach of the program.

, An agreement was signed in March 2006 concerning the hosting of the DCMI Conference Paper Repository. The repository is managed by Joe Tennis of the University of British Columbia, Canada, and hosted at Simon Fraser University Library in Canada. The collection includes all papers and posters of the DCMI conferences in Florence (2002), Seattle (2003), Shanghai (2004) and Madrid (2005). The Repository is built onsource software (Linux and Apache Tomcat) and displayed through Siderean Software's Seamark faceted navigation. Access is available through the link to “Conference Papers” in the left-hand navigation bar on the DCMI Home page.

, The DCMI Directorate has appointed Dr. Joseph Tennis, Assistant Professor at The University of British Columbia's School of Library, Archival and Information Studies, to the DCMI Usage Board.

, DCMI has issued a Call for Tender for brief texts and presentations explaining the rationale and business case for Dublin Core metadata to non-experts.

, The DCMI Directorate is pleased to announce the publication of the new Mission Statement and revised by-laws for the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. Read more...

, Jayakumaran of Web Publishing House in Singapore has been appointed co-chair of the DCMI Global Corporate Circle and member of the DCMI Advisory Board.

, In its meeting on 11 September 2005 in Madrid, the DCMI Board of Trustees confirmed new members Raju Buddharaju representing the DCMI Affiliate in Singapore, John Roberts representing the New Zealand Affiliate and David Dawson replacing Paul Miller as representative of the UK Affiliate. More information on the DCMI Board of Trustees...

, In its meeting on 16 September 2005 in Leganés, the DCMI Advisory Board confirmed new members Douglas Campbell of the National Library of New Zealand (new co-chair of the Date Working Group), Lourdes Feria Basurto of the Univeristy of Colima (co-ordinator for DC-2006), Jane Greenberg of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA (new co-chair of the Tools Working Group) and Joe Tennis of the University of British Columbia, Canada (responsible for the Dublin Core Conference Paper Repository). More information on the DCMI Advisory Board and its current members...

, In its meeting on 16 September 2005 in Leganés, the DCMI Advisory Board considered proposals for charters and workplans for all DCMI Working Groups. The chairs of the Working groups have informed or will soon inform their groups of any changes, and are in the process to update the Working Group Web pages accordingly. At the same time, the Advisory Board decided to de-activate the Working Groups Persistent Identifiers and User Documentation.

, As announced last month, New Zealand has now joined the DCMI Affiliate Program. The Affiliate program now spans across the globe, with Affiliates in Finland, the UK, Singapore and New Zealand, while DCMI is hosted by OCLC in the United States.

, The School for Library and Information Science of the University of Tsukuba in Japan is offering and maintaining a translation of the DCMI Web site in Japanese. A link to the Japanese site can be found in the lower right hand corner of the DCMI home page.

, The DCMI Directorate is pleased to announce that Tom Baker has been appointed DCMI Director of Specifications and Documentation by the DCMI Board of Trustees. In this role, Tom will continue to chair the Usage Board and manage the Usage Board's documentation (see: http://dublincore.org/usage/). In the next months, Tom will look specifically at the requirements for documentation and maintenance in the short and medium term. We are happy that Tom has agreed to take on these responsibilities and expect that results of his activities will be available by the time we go to Madrid for DC-2005.

, New Zealand has announced its decision to join the DCMI Affiliate Program, with the participation of Archives New Zealand, the National Library and the State Services Commission. See for more information the media release at http://www.archives.govt.nz/docs/pdfs/MediaReleaseDCMI.pdf.

, DCMI and the National Library Board of Singapore are pleased to announce that Singapore has joined the DCMI Affiliate Program. With this new Affiliate, the DCMI Affiliate Program further extends its global coverage, underlining the facts that DCMI is an international initiative and that Dublin Core metadata is relevant in many countries and cultural environments.

More information on the DCMI Affiliate Program can be found at: http://dublincore.org/about/affiliates/.

, This month marks the tenth anniversary of the Dublin Core, after the OCLC/NCSA Metadata Workshop that took place in Dublin, Ohio, 1-3 March 1995. The DCMI Directorate wishes to thank and congratulate all participants of the Dublin Core community at this milestone.

Ten years have elapsed since the OCLC/NCSA Metadata Workshop, the first in what has since become a workshop series, then a full conference series. Over that period, the Dublin Core community has largely shaped the framework of metadata on the Web. If you're doing metadata on the Web, chances are you started with Dublin Core.

The community we affectionately described in 1995 as 'geeks, freaks, and people with sensible shoes' has grown from the 52 original workshop participants to an international community of researchers and practitioners from more than 50 countries.

DCMI is-- anyone can participate, use the standard, and support its evolution. DCMI is international -- there are 25 languages in the DCMI metadata registry. DCMI is independent -- no industry or government agency controls the DCMI agenda. We are a grass roots global collaboration with many national standards and an ISO standard in our portfolio of value.

What DCMI has become, and what it will be in the future, is driven by the commonly held expertise of its participants, and shaped by their passions and commitment to improve discovery and management of intellectual assets for the benefit of the Internet Commons.

, The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) together with theDigital Rights Initiative (ODRL) are pleased to announce the formation of a joint Working Group to develop a profile of ODRL/DCMI metadata usage. The profile will show how to make combined use of the rights-related DCMI metadata terms and the ODRL rights expression language. This will enable richer rights management information to be captured along with DCMI descriptive metadata and support wider interoperability with digital rights management andcontent licensing systems.

The joint Working Group Chairs are Andy Powell (UKOLN, University of Bath) and Renato Iannella (ODRL Initiative). Full details, and subscription information is available from the joint Working Group web site: http://odrl.net/Profiles/DCMI/

, The DCMI Directorate, in consultation with the DCMI Advisory Board, has appointed Andrew Wilson of the National Archives of Australia and John Roberts of Archives New Zealand as chairs of the DCMI Agents Working Group, taking over from John Kunze and Stuart Weibel.

, The DCMI Advisory Board, in its meeting on 15 October 2004 in Shanghai, decided to de-activate the DCMI Type Working Group.

, The DCMI Directorate, in consultation with the DCMI Advisory Board, has appointed Thomas Severiens of the Institute for Science Networking Oldenburg and Harry Wagner of OCLC as chairs of the DCMI Tools Working Group, taking over from Roland Schwänzl who passed away this summer.

, The inaugural version of the Public Broadcasting Metadata Dictionary (PBcore), a standard way to describe all public broadcasting content based on Dublin Core metadata, is being finalized for the launch of version 1.0 in September 2004.

The origins of the Dublin Core are firmly grounded in cross disciplinary discovery -- providing a core metadata set that others would find useful as a basis for interoperabity, and yet be able to extend to meet more elaborate requirements. PBCore is a great example of such real-world deployment by one the most prestigious news community in the United States.

PBCore was developed under the auspices of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and benefited from consultation with DC practitioners and review by the DCMI Usage Board. Congratulations to the PBCore team, and to those in our community who contributed their time and effort to help bring this initiative to fruition. Read more...

, As part of the Affiliate Agreement with MLA and JISC in the UK, Paul Miller will represent the UK Affiliate on the DCMI Board of Trustees. Paul is the Director of the Common Information Environment in the UK, and was previously involved with DCMI as member of various executive and advisory committees and chair of working groups.

, The DCMI Directorate is pleased to announce that the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) and Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the further and higher education funding bodies in the UK have signed an Affiliate Agreement with DCMI, enabling the UK to become formally involved in the continued development of the Dublin Core metadata standards. MLA and JISC are the UK's official representatives, presenting the views of all UK public sector institutions at an international level. 

The signing of the UK Affiliate marks an important step forward for DCMI, and reminds us, as well, that the UK has been a leading contributor to global metadata since 1995. We look forward to their continued influence in the operation and governance of the Initiative. See also the press release by MLA and JISC.

, The DCMI Directorate is pleased to announce the publication of the By-laws of DCMI. These By-laws define all roles, responsibilities and procedures involved in the governance of DCMI and, as such, serve as a basic description of the organization and its functioning. More information...

, Diane Hillmann has graciously agreed to become Co-chair of the DCMI Education Working Group, replacing Paul Miller who stepped down from that position recently. More information...

, In addition to the links to RDF metadata on all pages on the DCMI Web site, we now also have embedded metadata on our pages, following the recommendation for XHTML encoding of Dublin Core metadata.

, The DCMI Usage Board is pleased to announce the to the addition of two new terms, "Moving Image" and "Still Image", to the DCMI Type Vocabulary. The new terms are documented on the Web page "DCMI Metadata Terms" and in an updated RDF schema.

, In a second batch after DC-2003, the Advisory Board has approved revised charters of the Accessibility, Education, Global Corporate Circle, Government, Registry and User Documentation Working Groups.

, The DCMI Advisory Board, in its meeting in Seattle on 3 October 2003, discussed and approved proposals for changes in DCMI Working Groups. It was decided that all groups will from now on be called Working Groups. All groups have a role in providing a discussion platform for the community on the subject defined in the charter. WGs can, but do not have to, have identified deliverables.

Further changes approved were: to establish a Working Group for Preservation, chaired by Heike Neuroth (State and University Library Göttingen, Germany) and Andrew Wilson (National Archives of Australia); to re-the Date Working Group, chaired by Eric Childress (OCLC, USA); to rename the User Guides Working Group to User Documentation Working Group, chaired by Mary Woodley (California State University Northridge); and to close the Administrative Working Group, chaired by Leif Andresen (Library Authority of Denmark).

, In the last two months, a number of new chairs have been appointed. Andy Powell (UKOLN, UK) is the new chair of the Architecture Working Group; Stu Weibel (OCLC, USA) replaces José Borbinha (National Library of Portugal) as co-chair of the Agents Working Group; Helen Josephine (Intel Library, USA) and Sarah Rice (Seneb Consulting, USA) are the new co-chairs of the Global Corporate Circle; John Roberts (Archives New Zealand) replaces Andrew Wilson (National Archives of Australia) as co-chair of the Government Working Group; Karen Rollitt (National Library of New Zealand) replaces Olga Barysheva (National Library of Russia) as co-chair of the Localization and Internationalization Working Group; and Robina Clayphan (The British Library, UK) replaces Rebecca Guenther (Library of Congress, USA) as chair of the Libraries Working Group.

, The DCMI Directorate has appointed Akira Miyazawa of the National Institute of Informatics (NII) in Tokyo to serve on the DCMI Usage Board. The designer of NACSIS-CAT, Japan's national bibliographic utility, he is currently working at NII on a metadata collection project and serves as chair of the Japanese committee for ISO/TC46 (Information and documentation). Haruki Nagata of the University of Tsukuba (Japan) will be stepping down after two years of service on the Usage Board.

, Following the DC-2003 workshop sessions, several Working Groups have been revising their charters. The revised charters of the Citation, Collection Description, and Libraries Working Groups have been approved by the Advisory Board over the last month, and revised charters of the Accessibility, Agents, Education, Government, Registies, Tools and User Documentation Working Groups are under discussion.

, Makx Dekkers, DCMI Managing Director, has published the next status report of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, with highlights of the last year. More information...

, With the help of Siderean Software, DC-2003 Conference now has abstracts available online. Click here to access descriptions of the papers and posters to the upcoming conference.

, Last chance for conference rate hotel booking! Deadline extended to September 8, 2003 for the DC-2003 conference hotel, Seattle Marriott Waterfront. This is the final deadline to get the conference rate. To make reservations click here. For more information about participating in DC-2003 click here.

, The DC-2003 Conference and Workshop tentative schedule to be held in Seattle, Washington, USA, September 28 through October 2 is available on the DC-2003 Web site. Abstracts of all papers and posters will be available online very soon. Online registration for the Conference hotel and all related activities is also available at the DC-2003 Web site.

Important URLs

• DC-2003 Conference and Workshop Web site
• Online Conference and Workshop preliminary schedule
• Registration for all pre-Conference Workshops, Conference/DCMI Workshop, and Conference hotel

Important notes and deadlines

• Hotel reservations for the DC-2003 Conference Hotel (Seattle Marriot Waterfront) must be made by 28 August 2003 in order to secure the conference rate.
• The pre-Conference Workshops on 28 September 2003 have limited seating available and are filling quickly--"Metadata and Search" (60 seats) and "Metadata Primer" (40 seats). Pre-Conference Workshop registration can be handled using the online Conference registration form at the URL noted above.

, As of July 1, 2003, Stuart Weibel has stepped down as Director of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. Makx Dekkers, DCMI's Managing Director, will assume this role. Stu will continue an active role on the DCMI Board of Trustees, on the Advisory Board, and as primary liaison between DCMI and OCLC, the host of the DCMI Directorate. Learn more.

, The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) and IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee (LTSC) are pleased to announce that the LTSC will be holding plenary and working group meetings in Seattle, Washington, September 30 - October 3 in conjunction with the DCMI 2003 conference (http://dc2003.ischool.washington.edu). This co-location will encourage the continued exchange of ideas and joint work. Further details concerning the LTSC meetings will be made available at http://ltsc.ieee.org and linked from the DCMI conference page.

, Register for DC-2003 today! The registration form for the Conference, Tutorial, and Workshop tracks as well as pre-Conference workshops is available at http://dc2003.ischool.washington.edu/registration.html. In addition, the new DC-Lab will provide organizations with the opportunity to present their DC-based applications to interested attendees in an informal setting. The DC-Lab will bethroughout the conference and will take place in a space accommodating approximate 6-8 simultaneous demonstrations. The facility will be equipped with a wireless network and several data projectors. Approximately one half of the space will be dedicated to pre-scheduled presentations and the remaining space will be filled on a drop-in basis. Daily early morning announcements will be made at DC-2003 of the DC-Lab schedule. Organizations interested in sharing their applications with attendees through the DC-Lab should contact Danielle Miller at mailto:koala.

, Makx Dekkers, DCMI Managing Director, has published the next status report of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, with highlights of the last three months. More information...

, Online registration is now available for the DC-2003 Conference & Workshop to be held in Seattle, Washington, USA 28 September through 2 October 2003. The registration form can be found on the Conference Web site. Registration for the 28 September pre-conference workshops Metadata Search (sponsored by the DCMI Global Corporate Circle) and Metadata Primer (sponsored by the University of Washington Information School) are also available through the online form. The number of available participants in the pre-conference workshops is limited so early registration is encouraged. Following thespirit of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, DC-2003 isto researchers, system implementers, metadata practitioners, administrators, and others wanting to engage in a dialog to advance the discourse and practice of metadata research and applications. DC-2003 will consist of Conference, Workshop, and Tutorial tracks.

, Two proposals from the DCMI Type Working Group to the Usage Board are now available for review and public comment. The public comment period for the proposals for Moving Image and Still Image isuntil 13 June 2003. [More info]

, The Contributed Papers deadline for DC-2003 has been extended from May 3, 2003 to May 17, 2003. For more information, see the DC-2003 Web site Call for Papers.

, DCMI and the National Library of Finland are pleased to announce that Finland has become DCMI's first National Affiliate. The DCMI Affiliate program is intended to provide a stronger link between local communities of practice and the Initiative. Affiliates will help promote the adoption of Dublin Core specifications, and provide a training and consulting foundation to help promulgate adoption of DC specifications. They will also maintain translations of base DCMI standards and documentation as appropriate for the locale. Affiliates will help support the infrastructure and management of DCMI, and in return, will assume a growing governance role in the Initiative.

Juha Hakala, Director, Information Technology for the National Library, and a long time Dublin Core partipant, sees DCMI Affiliation as an important strategic link between the National Library and many non-traditional constituents of the National Library.

Finland has adopted Dublin Core as a basic part of the government's information technology strategy, making DC a Finnish National Standard published by the Finnish Standards Association SFS, and maintained & supported by the National Library.

More information on DCMI Affiliates can be found at: http://dublincore.org/about/affiliates/

More information on the National Library of Finland can be found at: http://www.lib.helsinki.fi/english/

, Two DC-2003 pre-conference workshops will be offered on Sunday, 28 September 2003:

Metadata Search sponsored by the DCMI Corporate Circle. This all day workshop will focus on internal or site search technology, as opposed to external, Internet or web search technology (although some technology is applicable to both internal and external search applications). There will be presentations by experts, implementation case studies from our community, demonstrations by search technology vendors, and lots of time for Q&A with our experts, practitioners, vendors, and among ourselves.

Metadata Primer sponsored by the Information School of the University of Washington. This all day workshop will introduce the basics of metadata. In this primer, participants will learn metadata's role in resource discovery, management, and interoperability. We will cover the basics questions. "What is metadata?" "What can metadata do?" "How does XML figure into this?" These questions and more will be covered through interactive lectures and hands on computer lab-based mini-projects. The primer will be team-taught by members of the community of the Information School of the University of Washington and other select instructors who actively work with metadata.

, Makx Dekkers and Stuart Weibel have published the latest in the series of State of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative reports in the April issue of DLib Magazine, the online journal for digital library applications.

This article highlights DC 2003, held last fall in Florence as well as other progress in the past year.

Readers may access this article at: http://dlib.org/dlib/april03/weibel/04weibel.html

, The DCMI Directorate is pleased to report that the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set standard has been approved. The final text of the ISO 15836 standard and the balloting report, including the response to comments, on the SC4 document log on the ISO TC46/SC4 website: http://www.niso.org/international/SC4/sc4docs.html

This approval is a welcome culmination of an incremental process to bring the Dublin Core metadata element set to a broad world-wide constituency. This process has involved CEN in Europe and NISO in the US. As an international standard, it will be easier for many organizations to adopt and promote the use of Dublin Core to enhance resource discovery using the Internet.

Dublin Core is the only cross-domain resource discovery standard developed and standardized through anstandards process. More than 1500 people from 50 countries subscribe to DCMI working groups, and translations of DCMI metadata products are available in more than 20 languages. Ratification as an ISO standard is important recognition of this international effort.

Special thanks are due to Patricia Harris of NISO, who assisted in arranging the fast track balloting of this standard, and Leif Andresen, Chair of the DCMI Standards Interest Group, who was key to sheparding the event.

, Today, DCMI introduces a new Question and Answer service for the community: AskDCMI. This service is based on the virtual reference infrastructure developed by the Information Institute of Syracuse as part of the Virtual Reference Desk project. A number of experts from the Usage Board and the Advisory Board have agreed to be available to answer questions from the community. Selected questions and answers will be available in a searchable archive.

, The DCMI Directorate is pleased to announce the Public Comment period for the document "Guidelines for implementing Dublin Core in XML". Public Comment isuntil March 31, 2003. Comments should be sent to DC-General.

Contributed Papers Deadline: May 3, 2003

Other important dates for contributed works.

The DC-2003 Conference and Workshop will be held in Seattle, Washington, USA on 28 September 2003 through 2 October 2003. The Bell Harbor International Conference Center has been chosen as the Conference and Workshop venue. Two pre-conference workshops are in planning: (1) Metadata and Search sponsored by the DCMI Global Corporate Circle, and (2) Meta data Primer sponsored by the Information School of the University of Washington.

The DC-2003 Conference & Workshop will consist of the following tracks and activities:

• The Conference Track consists of peer-reviewed papers and posters reporting on both original and applied research. The scope of matters addressed by the contributed papers is not confined to the Dublin Core metadata element set but extends across all metadata schemas and application domains.
• The Workshop Track features technical meetings for the ongoing work of the DCMI Working Groups.
• The Tutorial Track provides structured learning activities designed to introduce participants to select topics of interest to users, developers, and implementers of Dublin Core metadata.
• The DC-Lab provides implementers of services and tools in the metadata community the opportunity to informally showcase their applications on a scheduled, but informal basis in the DC-2003 wireless network lab.

, The DC-2003 Conference and Workshop will be held in Seattle, Washington, USA on 28 September 2003 through 2 October 2003. The Program Committee has issued a Call for Papers. All submissions will be peer-reviewed by the DC-2003 Program Committee and accepted papers and posters will be published on line and in print as the DC-2003 Conference Proceedings. Important submission dates for authors of papers and posters include:

1. May 3, 2003: Contributed papers due
2. May 17, 2003: Proposals for posters due
3. June 7, 2003: Authors and poster proposers notified
4. July 5, 2003: Camera-ready copy due for papers and posters

The Program Committee emphasizes that the scope of the DC-2003 Conference Track is broad in the sense that it is not limited to research and development focusing solely on the Dublin Core metadata element set. Rather, the Conference Track seeks to bring together researchers and implementers concerned with metadata issues in a broad array of contexts as those issues affect both cross-domain and discourse/practice community resource discovery, retrieval, use and management.

, The DCMI Usage Board welcomes its ninth member, Andrew Wilson of the National Archives of Australia. Andrew works on the Australian Government Locator Service (AGLS) and has been involved with the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative since 1998, having played a major role in the work of the DC-Government working group.

The Usage Board makes a critical contribution to the DCMI process, reviewing and evaluating proposals for additions or changes in DCMI metadata terms, and helping to assure the coherence of these terms within the DCMI architecture.

More information on AGLS can be found at: http://www.naa.gov.au/recordkeeping/gov_online/agls/summary.html
More information on the DCMI Usage Board can be found at: http://dublincore.org/usage/

, On 22-23 January 2003, a meeting in Washington DC, hosted by NIST, brought together a group of people working in DC-Accessibility and people active in INCITS V2, to discuss the development of an international roadmap of who is doing what work in the field of accessibility. See: http://www.dc-anz.org/access-roadmap/. Those interested are invited to contact the chair of the DC-Accessibility group, Liddy Nevile <liddy.nevile>, to receive more information about how to participate in this work.