I'm forwarding the response below on behalf of Eliot Christian of USGS
with regard to the discussion on Dublin Core versus GILS.
Margaret St. Pierre
Blue Angel Technologies
> ----------
> From: Eliot Christian
> Sent: Wednesday, March 18, 1998 1:49 PM
>
> At 09:52 AM 3/18/98 -0500, you wrote:
> > [Weibel,Stu] It is my understanding that the Federal
> > Information Processing Standard that supports GILS deployment in
> the
> > US will expire this year and will not be renewed.
>
> In actual fact, the Federal Information Processing Standard for the
> GILS
> Profile did not expire, it was re-issued this year as FIPS 192-1. (The
>
> re-issuance was to update from GILS Profile version 1 to version 2.
> Copies
> are available from the National Institute of Standards and
> Technology.)
>
> The U.S. Federal GILS continues to be in force under U.S. Public Law
> and
> policy, as was reiterated again to all Federal agencies by the Office
> of
> Management and Budget in a Memorandum to agency heads dated Feb. 6,
> 1998.
> <http://www.usgs.gov/gils/omb98-05.html>.
>
> You should also note that there are many other GILS implementations
> aside
> from the U.S. Federal GILS. Some of these are noted at
> <http://www.usgs.gov/gils/sampler.html> and many of these have a
> formal base such as state law or policy.
>
> I would also say it is just not appropriate to speak about "Dublin
> Core
> versus
> GILS" as though these were competing products. The GILS Profile
> defines a
> common search service with several well-known elements (e.g., Title,
> Author,
> Subject) required to be searchable if populated. GILS also lists the
> well-known attributes for about 100 other common metadata elements,
> all of
> which map to MARC. Among these elements are the 15 unqualified Dublin
> Core
> elements and perhaps a good portion of qualified Dublin Core elements
> as well.
> (The GILS Profile is at <http://www.usgs.gov/gils/prof_v2.html>. An
> overview
> of available elements is at <http://www.usgs.gov/gils/elements.html>.
> )
>
> The GILS Profile does not prescribe the format of the information
> "behind"
> a GILS Server. Metadata can be marked up according to a Dublin Core
> syntax
> convention (this is the case with the Nordic Web Index, for example)
> or any
> other metadata format convention you can imagine. The search service
> just
> maps queries into whatever format is in use.
>
> So, as Stu and I agreed, Dublin Core and GILS are complementary, not
> competitive.
>
> I do have some concerns about whether Dublin Core will be fully
> aligned with
> MARC, but this is really an issue for the cataloging community to
> address.
> I do know that most metadata to date has been created by data
> processing
> people with perhaps little regard for common library practice, so
> we've got
> our work cut out for us to make interoperability a reality!
>
> I think the bottom line is that we are on a long journey here and we
> fully
> expect GILS to evolve over the decades. We succeed in that not only by
>
> sticking to our basic principles, but by accommodating new
> developments.
> I suspect that the Dublin Core community is also prepared to evolve,
> so I
> look forward to a lot of convergence in many areas of common interest.
>
>
> Eliot Christian, US Geological Survey, 802 National Center, Reston VA
> 20192
> [log in to unmask] Office 703-648-7245 FAX 703-648-7112 Home
> 703-476-6134
>
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