-------- Original Message --------
Subject:        Meeting on Discovery Metadata, 2 April 2003
Date:   Tue, 25 Mar 2003 17:03:38 +0000
From:   David Penfold <[log in to unmask]>
To:     [log in to unmask],
[log in to unmask],
[log in to unmask],
[log in to unmask], [log in to unmask],
[log in to unmask], [log in to unmask]



Dear Moderator

I would be grateful if you would post the message below to your list. I
apologise for any cross-posting.

With many thanks

David Penfold


 = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

British Computer Society
Electronic Publishing Specialist Group

announces a one-day conference
2 April 2003, 10.00 am to 5 pm
at BSG House, 226-236 City Road, London EC1V 2TT
(closest underground station Old Street)


****************    Discovery Metadata    ****************

METADATA means data about data.  Discovery metadata is data
that helps you to find what you want to read.  In a sense,
discovery metadata is an established concept in publishing,
with a fancy new name.  Consider the process of finding a book
or a journal article...  Bibliographies are full of helpful
metadata for this purpose of "discovery", and libraries could
not function without their catalogues.

Then there's what we might call internal discovery metadata.
Again, this is not new.  Grateful readers have long had cause
to bless the helpful men and women who compile good back-of-
the-book indexes.

Metadata has become a hot topic for publishers.  EPSG's last
meeting on metadata, a year ago, was a great success, which
is why we are revisiting the topic on 2 April this year.

The reason why metadata is so important now is because the
Internet has changed our model of publishing.  Our potential
readers are looking for published material that will answer
their questions, and they are doing so with tools such as
search engines.

We all know how frustrating and annoying it can be not to be
able to find materials because the tools for accessing it are
missing, inadequate or user-unfriendly.  We know how cunning
you have to learn to become to get somewhere useful with a
free text search on Google -- and how Boolean logic taxes the
brain!  And it doesn't matter how "information literate" you
are if the material is poorly categorised, labelled and indexed
in the first place.

As any good indexer knows, the problem of resource description
is a profoundly human one. What synonyms should we build into
the system to avoid search failures through a mismatch of
vocabularies?

Publishers need to become more knowledgeable about the modern
technologies and practices around metadata.  This one-day event
will follow the well-established BCS EPSG method of presentations
by experts in different sectors, sharing their knowledge and
practice of discovery metadata, and providing unique insights
into current practice in several publishing sectors.

Presentations will cover the e-Government initiative (eGIF),
metadata for museum and gallery collections, tools for automatic
indexing, online encyclopedias, controlled vocabularies, and even
the humble (but still thriving, thank goodness) book index.


Speakers (subject to final confirmation) will include

-- Stella Dextre Clark, a consultant with the e-Envoy's Office,
     on the eGovernment initiative
-- John Darlington from Active Navigation
-- Ann Wrightson (formerly with Ontopia)
     on topic maps
-- Judi Vernau of TSO on Gammasite,
     an automatic tagging system
-- Norman Paskin of the DOI Foundation,
     on Metadata Interoperability
-- Margaret Hanley of the BBC
-- Alpay Beler of the Science Museum
-- Barry Kruger of BECTA on Curriculum Online,
     the online education site
-- Gina Fullerlove
     on the Macmillan Encyclopedia of Life Sciences
-- A speaker from Fretwell-Downing
     on their open metadata server platform which allows
     integration of metadata and data sets into
     digital library environments

Fuller details and a booking form are available on EPSG's web site
http//www.epsg.org.uk/meetings/metadata2003/index.html

If you have any queries, please contact me at the address below.

David Penfold


--
Dr David Penfold, Chairman and administrator
British Computer Society Electronic Publishing Specialist Group
Edgerton Publishing Services
Pett Road, Pett, Hastings, East Sussex TN35 4HA, UK
Tel +44 1424 813003; Fax +44 1424 813301; Mobile +44 7850 058544
E-mail [log in to unmask]