Folks!
According to the deliverables of our WG:

    Deliverable: Recommendations on formal recognition and standardization
    Due date: Sometime before the next DC workshop. 
    Action: Hans Becker, Amine Bensaid, Olga Barysheva 

I sent the announced document to Hans Becker and Amine Bensaid but
still have no answer. That is why I am waiting for comments of teh
whole WG. Thanks in advance, Olga

OFFICIAL RECOGNITION FOR DUBLIN CORE SCHEMAS IN OTHER LANGUAGES

Olga Barysheva <[log in to unmask]>, National Library of Russia, St. Petersburg

This document could include the following issues:
1. National versions of Dublin Core
The TRANSLATION of the current version -- Dublin Core Metadata Element Set version 1.1 -- should strongly follow the original.
A question arises about qualifiers: must we include them and demand a complete translation of all qualifiers, rules, examples, or templates before conferring official recognition?
2. Certification at National Level
Each country handles standards differently.
I would prefer that translations be submitted to and approved by leading organizations (e.g. national libraries, bibliographic centers such as OCLC, ministries of culture, institutes for scientific information, national library associations or leading regional libraries, according to the political division of the country). But it depends on the accepted practice of the country.
This results of this step vary as well -- from National or Branch Standards to Recommended Formats (like MARC for cataloguing).
A question arises as to whether these versions should be divided by country or by language.  We recognized this problem at DC7, bearing in mind the situation of countries like India or Russia, which have many regional languages but one official language.  On the other hand, would this mean that English-speaking countries create their own DCs?  This relates to the first question because the DCMES could be translated in Australia, UK and US the same way, but the complete DCQ set plus
templates would naturally be different, as with different MARC formats.
My opinion is: we must choose COUNTRY instead of the LANGUAGE and change the title of the document because language is an uncontrolled quantity and we cannot define its extent.
3. Certification at the international level
One might need a procedure for DCMI to recognize a national standard (or something like it) as a country's "official" DCMES.
I propose that a DCMI committee have the task of comparing a translation of DCMES against the original to verify its content and check the accuracy of the translation.
The result must be the following: to recognize this version of DCMES as a country's official version, with a link from the DCMI Web site to the national server where it is located. Taking into consideration traffic density and congestion, it would be reasonable to put the countries' official DCMESes both at the DCMI Web site and national Web sites.  DCMI could perhaps require only the DCMES -- not all of the qualifiers, which would be optional, at the discretion of each country.
It would be useful to link the schemes, so that a DCMES element is linked to its French, German, and Russian equivalents.
4. Support, updates, templates
The questions here are as follows:
-- What is the role of other national or regional standardization authorities?  
-- Should each country or language have an official designated maintenance agency? 
-- How could the DCMI review the candidate agencies and DC schemas for  quality and institutional commitment?
-- What tasks should such agencies be expected to undertake?
My opinion is that each country should have an official designated maintenance agency.
An official maintenance agency for DCMI should include:
-- member(s) of the DCMI Advisory or Executive Committee for operational control (foreign);
-- DCMI member(s) (native),
-- representatives of leading national institutions including if necessary national or regional standardization authorities (native)
The mission of the agency would be:
-- to support the dissemination of DC;
-- to keep the translation of DCMES up-to-date (hope it is sufficient
   to update a version without reapplying to DCMI for recognition);
-- keeping the DCMI informed about countrys-specific activity on DC;
-- monitoring of use of software tools and their adequacy for DCMES.


Best regards,
     Olga Barysheva
 The National Library of Russia
                          
 reply to: [log in to unmask]




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