Dear fellow DC-General subscirbers,

Our community has learned the unhappy news that Roland Schwaenzl, one of the
long-time leaders of this Initiative, has recently passed away in
Osnabrueck, Germany.

Roland was active in the Dublin Core since the early days of the Initiative,
and led one of the earliest production implementations of Dublin Core.
Indeed, encountering the work of Roland's group was something of an epiphany
for me.  It was the first time that I learned of a group that was not
directly involved in the development of the standard, but discovered it and
decided... This is the answer to a problem that we have.  They quietly went
about the business of implementing it, and that application persists today.

This work was presented at a DELOS workshop in Bonn in 1996, and it is the
moment in those early days when i first thought to myself...  when people
see your work and simply apply it... we must have done something useful
here!  It took a good deal of courage for them to do this in those days.
The work was new and evolving, and every technology implementer knows the
dangers of early adoption.

But that isn't the end of the story.  Roland protected his investment with
passionate advocacy and diligent hard work, investing substantial
intellectual resources in making it better.  He joined the DCMI Advisory
Board, and never failed to bring thoughtful (often passionate) comment to
bear on the important issues that confronted us.  Roland fought very hard
for the positions he held, rightly convinced that judgements annealed and
tempered in the fires of practical implementation generally carry the day.
To oppose him was always daunting -- experience generally trumps theory in
metadata, as in most aspects of life.

Roland's email messages were often terse, and, because English was not his
primary working language, distilling his intent sometimes required careful
intellectual detective work.  This in itself often would help solve the
problem! I have to smile when I think of the many back-channel exchanges
among DC mavens after one or another of Roland's sometimes-prickly
pronouncements.  We all wanted to keep him happy, knowing that if Roland
thought there was a problem... there probably was.

Roland was also passionate about the promise of the semantic web, and was
active as an RDF implementor.  Roland and his colleague Stefan Kokkelink
co-authored the DCMI specification on the deployment of DC in RDF.  He felt
strongly that RDF was the way metadata should be declared and shared, and
did much to make it possible.  Again, the pioneer.

Roland was a member of the DCMI Usage Board from its inception.  This work
requires a lot of time and effort from its members, and is in some sense the
key working group in the DCMI community.  He fought hard for his ideas,
taking seriously his guardianship of the standard.

So many recollections of this dedicated mathematician come to mind.  On a
personal level, the one I cherish most is a snowy night in Osnabrueck when I
had arrived in the evening for a workshop in the next days.  The weather was
bad and getting worse, but Roland collected me and the two of us may have
been the only ones in town searching for a meal that night.  We ate in the
empty Gasthaus, talking of metadata and family.  Like most of us in the
standards arena, Roland's frequent travel could be a problem.  His daughter
was involved in a recital that week, and it required long drives back and
forth during the workshop.  Roland smiled that wry smile his friends know
well, grateful that he was within striking distance, a parent looking
forward to seeing his daughter perform.

Roland's death is an untimely reminder to all of us that we have little and
uncertain time available to us, and it is important to use it well.  He made
an important contribution to this field, and his passing leaves a void in
the pantheon of metadata experts that will not easily be filled.  But when I
remember him I will think first of that snowy night in Osnabrueck, a father
eager to see his future on stage.

Rest in peace, Roland.  Your friends and colleagues will miss you.

In lieu of flowers, contributions are requested for the local hospice and
German cancer society:

Osnabruecker Hospiz e.V.
Account 8003, Bank code 26550105 (Sparkasse Osnabrueck)

Deutsche Krebshilfe
Accounts 909093, Bank code 38050000 (Sparkasse Bonn)

stu

Stuart Weibel
Senior Research Scientist
OCLC Office of Research
+1 614 764 6081
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