As is customary following a DC meeting, there will be a
State-of-the-Initiative report, but I'd like to highlight a few notes about
DC-2001 just concluded in Tokyo.

First of all, I think all who attended the meeting will agree that it was
superbly organized and managed by our hosts at NII. No brief note can do
justice to the hospitality, efficiency and grace that marked the hosting of
this meeting. Jun Adachi of NII and his capable staff made it look
effortless in the way that only hard work and careful planning can achieve.
Keizo Oyama, Takehisha Fujita, and Hironobu Gotodo managed local
arrangements that were flawless, and which set the stage for a very
productive environment for the hard work of the agenda. Community building
is a fundamental part of the work of the Initiative, and this meeting
excelled in this regard, thanks largely to the terrific support of these
folks and a great supporting staff too numerous to mention by name.

This was DCMI's first three track event, consisting of a workshop track, a
tutorial track, and a conference track. A few highlights of each:

The Workshop

Community-based use of DC -- by libraries, education, government, and
environmental agencies -- was a dominant theme of the workshop track.
Interaction between the Government WG and Usage Board was of particular
importance, and should help to get the Government extension proposal
resubmitted and accepted in 2002. In addition, there were productive working
group meetings focussing on specific elements and functions, including
citations, agents, type vocabularies, and management of metadata.

Sessions on technical coordination and prototype Registry demonstration
attracted a lot of interest, and there were smaller, focussed meetings on
issues of standardization, accessibility, and the Agricultural Ontology
Server presentation.

WG meetings were generally useful for furthering the respective workplans,
and will result in updated workplans for 2002. Watch for details on
working group mailing lists, web pages, and the 2002 Workplan that will be
forthcoming from the Directorate by the end of calendar year 2001.

The Tutorial Track

Three tutorials were offered (Introductions to Dublin Core, Resource
Description, and Application Profiles) and each enjoyed upwards of 200
attendees. Simultaneous translation made these sessions more accessible to
the many Japanese who attended, thus amplifying their impact and reach.

The Conference Track

The program committee received some 50 papers from 20 countries, resulting
in a program of broad scope and great diversity. Attendees from more than
25 countries had a lot to choose from and great opportunities to make
contacts and share experiences. The conference track was conceived with
just this in mind - a meeting place for practitioners and those planning on
being such. The online proceedings are available at
<http://www.nii.ac.jp/dc2001/>.

Professor Nagao, President of Kyoto University and one of the most
distinguished academicians in Japan gave the keynote address.

The Usage Board

The DCMI Usage board constitutes DCMI's editorial committee, reviewing and
evaluating proposals for qualifiers and additional domain-specific elements.
This group may have earned the hardest-working-participants award. Their
meetings bracketed the conference and they also met at dinners and lunches
and in late evening sessions. This was the second meeting of this group
(they met in May for the first time), and they made substantial progress in
establishing procedure as well as evaluating a variety of important
proposals. Usage board members also participated in critical working group
meetings which helped to communicate the thinking and procedures of this
evolving activity to other participants.

Much more took place in Tokyo than I can summarize easily -- Makx Dekkers
and I will be working to pull together the many threads of this meeting into
a Workplan for 2002. I will close this note by reiterating my personal
thanks to the many people who as organizers, program committee members,
tutorial presenters, and participants who made DC-2001 a great success.

Arigato goziemasu!

stu

Stuart Weibel
Executive Director
Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
OCLC Office of Research

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