All,

I'm planning to make one last set of revisions to the DC CD AP and to
submit it on Monday 28 August for review by the DCMI Usage Board at
their meeting at the end of September.

After that there may be some (hopefully relatively minor!) amendments
required to take account of comments made by the Usage Board, but
essentially this will represent the completion of the major deliverable
of this Working Group. 

I would welcome any thoughts on future activity for the WG. This will
form part of the discussion at the WG meeting at DC-2006 in Manzanillo,
but I think it would be good to have some sense of what WG members would
like to see happen, particularly as many members of this list will not
be able to attend in person.

It seems to me there are a range of options available to us, including
the following:

(a) A small "editorial group" agrees to work on whatever changes are
required in response to the Usage Board review, and to put in place some
procedures for the ownership/maintenance of the DC CD AP and for
ownership/maintenance of the new terms. But this is a very short-term
exrcise and the WG itself is not re-chartered. The DCMI CD WG would not
exist after October 2006, and this mailing list would be closed once
that short-term work was done.

(b) We propose a new charter/workplan for the DCMI CD WG, based on a
"support" role for the existing DC CD AP, including making any changes
required in response to the Usage Board review, and putting in place
some procedures for the ownership/maintenance of the DC CD AP and for
ownership/maintenance of the new terms. The DCMI CD WG would continue to
exist, and this mailing list would remain open. The WG would have a
fairly "passive" role, responding to queries/comments from implementers
as required, and possibly producing some additional documentation for
the DC CD AP (e.g. mappings to/from other schemas, notes on implementer
experiences etc).
 
(c) We propose a new charter/workplan for the DCMI CD WG which includes
the development of one or more new DCAPs based on the existing DC CD AP
to support the description of particular subclasses of collection, which
might include mandating the use of some of the optional properties used
in DC CD AP, ignoring other optional properties in DC CD AP,
recommending or developing specific vocabulary or syntax encoding
schemes, coining new properties that are relevant only or mainly to
those sublasses of collection etc. The DCMI CD WG would continue to
exist, and this mailing list would remain open. The WG would have an
active role pursuing that new workplan.

(d) We propose a new charter/workplan for the DCMI CD WG which includes
the development of a new DCAP to cover a larger subset of Mike Heaney's
extended model (e.g. to specify how to create descriptions of Locations
and Services/Resource Mediators). The DCMI CD WG would continue to
exist, and this mailing list would remain open. The WG would have an
active role pursuing that new workplan.

I'm sure there are other possibilities I haven't thought of - and of
course any charter/workplan would have to be acceptable to the
Directorate and the Advisory Board. 

Any thoughts would be welcome.

Cheers

Pete
---
Pete Johnston
Technical Researcher, Eduserv Foundation
Web: http://www.eduserv.org.uk/foundation/
Email: [log in to unmask] 
Tel: +44 (0)1225 474323