Kenneth
Thanks for this message (reproduced in full below for those on the ednatech
list).
I hope you are not feeling too much like the boy who was scorned for
pointing out that the emperor has no clothes. It is indeed worth asking
the question and worrying somewhat if the answer is that noone has done it
yet (and the lack of response to your message indicates that the answer is
that probably they haven't).
Certainly for me, the analogy with the development of system for filtering
of Internet content is a useful one - forests of trees died to create
newspaper articles about the horrors of inappropriate content on the
Internet, many person-life times probably went into the development of the
PICS standard and the establishment of filtering software. Yet we are only
now beginning to see the practical problems of actually trying to implement
a system. Notably the concerns about the value judgements made in private
by vendors of filtering software, and the practical difficulties of
actually rating sites. For more information see:
http://www.thehub.com.au/~rene/liberty/label.html
I guess the reasons I'm not too worried on DC and metadata just yet are:
* A working metadata system is a complex beast involving
* agreement on a standard and a means for extending it
* agreement on semantics of the scheme across many countries,
disciplines, languages, types of content etc.
* agreement on shared schemes for some fields
* agreement on syntax for various systems of storing and accessing
metadata
* widespread deployment of systems to assist people to enter MD
* a substantive body of material which contains metadata
* search and display systems to find resources using MD
* training for users to both create and use MD
* None of these bits are much use without the others so its a complex
business getting the whole thing started.
* We seem collectively to be working on most of these aspects
* There is a strong motivation to get it right if Internet resources are
to remain findable and usable with the explosive growth in content.
I would be greatly relieved if there had been four responses to your
message pointing out four working systems but there werent. We are pressing
on regardless with the EdNA metadata system none-the-less. Basically
because we believe a critical momentum will develop behind DC and we cant
see any alternative for the type of decentralised system we are creating.
I think in summary what I am trying to say is: Keep asking the hard
questions, but dont give up yet - I think we will get there.
Regards
Jack Gilding
=====================================
At 07:44 PM 10/4/97 METDST, you wrote:
>Hi,
> I follow both the DC development as well
>as development of search protocols and
>indexing tools closely.
>Could someone point me to a site, organization,
>or similar that has managed to implement a
>system that uses DC in HTML and combines that
>with an efficient navigation/indexing system.
>I'm getting more and more worried by the fact
>that there are almost no demonstrators out
>there and that noone seems to worry about that.
>Regards,
> Kenneth
>--
> _______________________________________
>| Kenneth Holmlund |
>| Theoretical Physics, Umeå University |
>| S-901 87 Umeå, Sweden |
>| phone: +46-(0)90-167717 |
>| fax: +46-(0)90-169556 |
>| mailto:[log in to unmask] |
>| http://www.tp.umu.se/~holmlund/ |
> ---------------------------------------
>
>
>
end =============================================================
Jack Gilding ph: (03)9628-4652
Project Manager, VET EdNA Project fax: (03)9628-2472
Communications & Multimedia Unit [log in to unmask]
OTFE, PO Box 266D Melbourne VIC 3001 http://www.edna.edu.au/vetwp/
(level 4 Rialto Sth Tower 525 Collins Street Melbourne Australia)
|
