Dear Agents Working Group,

As co-chair of this group I'm finally finding time to report on results
and new action items from the Agents group session, held during the
Dublin Core workshop and conference in Tokyo.  I apologize for the delay
and hope that everyone's past few weeks have been less hectic than mine.

The breakout session in Tokyo went very well, and we emerged with a
concrete "to do" list and people to work on them.  The only problem
is that our original target completion dates were overly optimistic.
José and I have pushed them back a bit.

We still need a target date and additional volunteers for the CCP
qualifiers action item.

-John

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		Agents Working Group Meeting Report
			23 October 2001
		Dublin Core Workshop, DC-2001, Tokyo


New Action Items
----------------

These items are related to parts of the Agents WG charter.

   1.  Develop an "Agent Linking Convention".
       This is a standard way to reference an Agent record from a
       resource description, and is closely related to part 4 of the
       charter.  The convention should focus on only three components,
       some (all?) optional: an "appropriate literal" (e.g., a name),
       a link pointing to the agent description, and a scheme
       indicating what kind of description the link points to.

       Subgroup:  Becky Dean, Barbara Tillett, Andy Powell,
       Ed O'Neill, Stuart Weibel

	       Target date:  11 January 2002

   2.  Develop a core set of Agent elements to be used for creating
       basic agent descriptions (part 2 of the charter, with part 1
       as a possible prerequisite).

       Subgroup:  Lyn Marko, Barbara Tillett, Andrew Wilson,
       Hans Becker, Heike Neuroth, Warwick Cathro, José Borbinha

	       Target date:  15 March 2002

   3.  Develop a list of CCP (Creator/Contributor/Publisher) qualifiers.
       This would likely use the MARC relator codes as a point of
       departure, and define such things as agent refinements, classes,
       types, and roles.

       Subgroup: Robina Clayphan, Rebecca Guenther (?), ...

	       No target date assigned.
	       Robina and Rebecca:  would you please suggest a date?


Agents WG Charter (3 Nov 2000)
------------------------------

The DCMI "Agent Issues" working group (a descendant of an earlier group
known simply as "Agents") aims to resolve issues that have arisen from
the need to describe actors (persons, groups, or automata) in various
events (e.g., creation, revision, publication, transcription, derivation)
in the lifecyles of information resources.  Specifically, the Agents
Issues working group is called upon to

   1.  Develop a commentary which sets out the rationale and purpose of
       an agent record and an agent element set.

   2.  Develop a Recommendation for an agent element set, possibly to
       include agent element qualifiers.

   3.  Propose qualifiers for the Creator, Contributor, and Publisher
       (the CCP) elements of the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set.
       This activity is completely independent of the agent element set.

   4.  Provide input to the DCMI Architecture working group concerning
       a recommended mechanism for linking CCP elements to agent records.


Temporary Working Definitions
-----------------------------

Agent:  A _person_
		(author, publisher, sculptor, editor, director, etc.),
	or a _group_ (organization, corporation, library, orchestra,
		country, federation, etc.),
	or an _automaton_ (weather recording device, software
		translation program, etc.)
	that has a role in the lifecycle of a resource.

Agent Record:  A collection of elements describing an agent.

Agent Authority Record:  An agent record that includes the particular
name that is preferred (considered authoritative) within a particular
community (e.g., libraries).