Dear Dublin Core Agents Working Group,
Although it's been a while since we've had activity on this mailing list,
there have been some developments going on in the background.
First, we've had a change in leadership. José Borbinha has stepped down
from co-chairing this group after putting in several years of service.
Thank you, José, for your many valuable contributions! In his place,
Stuart Weibel (OCLC) has agreed to serve with me as co-chair.
Second, some abbreviated notes (thanks to Stuart) from this group's
in-person meeting last October in Seattle are enclosed below. The
upshot is a proposed new charter (comments welcome) and a new set of
deliverables. What follows is the proposed new charter, new
deliverables, and the status of those deliverables.
--- Proposed New Charter ---
1. Develop functional requirements for describing agents.
2. Identify and evaluate existing conventions for agent description
against the functional requirements.
3. Develop a recommendation for an agent element set.
4. Provide input to the DCMI Architecture working group concerning the
linking of resource description records to agent description records.
--- New Deliverables and Status ---
A. Robina Clayphan will post information on the InterParty elements
to assist in the background thinking on the Agent Core.
- Completed as of email of 8 October 2003:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A2=ind0310&L=dc-agents&T=0&F=&S=&P=54
The information on InterParty can be found here:
http://www.interparty.org/interparty/presentations.asp
B. Andy Powell will post a brief RDF description
- New due date of 28 February 2004
C. Andrew Wilson will draft a set of functional requirements for an
Agent Core
- Completed as of email of 10 February 2004
(see next message from this list)
Please feel free to comment on any and all of the above.
-John
--- DC Agents Working Group Meeting Notes, 2 Oct 2003, Seattle ---
Agent Description Core
* History
* Motivation
* Assumptions
* Requirements
* Strategy
History
* Discussion of Agents as a generalization of the CCP elements dates
back to DC:dc
* A single element, with assigned roles
* The current activity is agnostic on this issue; the goal is to
elaborate core elements for describing people and organizations,
not to replace existing attributes of resources
* The Agent Proposal of Old
* The Current Agent Proposal
Agent Description Core Objectives
* Core elements appropriate to identification of people and organizations
Promote convergence among new schemes
* A property set that existing schemes can map into for purposes of
after-the-fact interoperability
* Extend the principles of modularity and extensibility into the
identification of people and organizations
* A core, not exhaustive... should include the ability to reference a
more complete, structured description held in a formal repository.
Assumptions
* Many extant name authority schemas
* Agent Description Core will not displace these schemas, though
widespread adoption may reduce the development of new ones
* Architecture and characteristics embedded in any standard must
flexibly accommodate the management and protection of privacy
What is in Scope?
* Three subclasses of agents are likely to be important in metadata:
persons, organizations, and instruments.
* Instruments are judged to be out of scope in this effort
* Architectural considerations of Dublin Core in no way precludes
further elaboration at a future time
Agents and Rights
* A successful Agent metadata architecture will support assertions of
IP rights
* Link easily to formally managed authority systems such as library
authority files or Interested Party file used to manage music rights
Agent Core and Related Authority Activities
* What is the Relationship of the Agent Core to other authority
activities
* VIAF
* Interparty
* EduPerson
* Vcard
* Others?
Strategy
* Identify functional requirements of DC Agent Description Core
* Identify and characterize representative agent systems
* Propose elements that support the functional requirements and
provide good interoperability prospects with other critical systems.
Working Group Discussion
* May involve reinventing wheels, but a clear explication of the
functional requirements may make evident the need to do so
* Linking conventions and exchange formats (rather than a full set of
elements) may suffice
* Andy Powell's abstract model is an essential component of solving this
problem (esp. the linking aspects)
* If we have the linking convention, are there some default elements
that might be appropriate for explicit, internal terms within DCMI
namespaces?
Discussion (cont)
* Andy P. can provide some examples of what the linking would look like
in RDF
* Minimum set of elements to define agents might be necessary because
of the diversity of terms across the many existing authority files
- look at Interparty set as a candidate (Robina can post these
to the list)
* INFO URI scheme may provide a means for ID linking from URI space to
un-webulated authority files - its future is not clear at this time
* The variety of candidate related metadata to link to is probably
broad
Discussion (cont)
* Andrew Wilson has volunteered to start a functional requirements
document (Robina indicated the Interparty work has one she can
contribute to the discussion)
* Rights discussion: Rights proposal is under development by Weibel
and Eric Miller, with advice from Andy P.
* Agents group is a good place to identify additional functional
requirements for specifying rights holders
Revisions to Agent Charter
* Develop a funtional requirements for an Agent Description Core
* Identify and evaluate existing agent descriptions against the
functional requirements
* Develop a recommendation for an agent element set
* Provide input to the DCMI Architecture working group concerning the
linking specification to related (agent) metadata within the
abstract model
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