DC Working Groups				       November 30, 1998
Call for participation

Summary of this message:

This note is the formal Call for Participation for Dublin Core Working
Groups and Special Interest Groups.  Please read carefully if you are
interested in participating in or providing input to Dublin Core Working
Groups. 

This message contains information on:

 - Element-specific mailing lists and their charters
 - Issue-specific mailing lists
 - Special interest group mailing lists
 - How to join a group and a list
 - Volunteering to chair a group


I.  Working Groups organized to address element-specific issues

The following groups are formulated to address issues related to specific
elements or clusters of elements.  The charter for each of these groups is
roughly the same:

Element-specific Working Group Charter:

1. Review RFC 2413 and propose appropriate corrections and clarifications.

The working groups should review RFC 2413 definitions and propose any
corrections and clarifications for a revision of RFC 2413.  The resulting
proposal should include proposed rewording of the definition and the
reasoning to support the change, as well as important counter arguments that
emerge from the mailing list discussions.  All such recommendations should
be made with the objective of enhancing clarity while minimizing impact on
existing applications.  Working group members should avoid proposing changes
without clear evidence that such changes will correct errors or improve the
understandability previously agreed upon Dublin Core semantics.  This task
is of the highest priority and should be completed within 4 weeks of
establishing the working group.     

2. Recommend qualifier semantics for element[s] covered by the working group

The Dublin Core Directorate will solicit from implementers recommendations
concerning qualifier semantics that have been found to be useful in existing
applications, and judged to be potentially useful for a broad range of
Dublin Core applications (and hence, important to promote interoperability).
These recommendations should be consolidated, discussed on the mailing
lists, and integrated into a syntax-independent prose recommendation.
Working groups should attempt to identify qualifier semantics (from existing
and proposed applications) that might have general usefulness for Dublin
Core applications.

It is worth emphasizing that the deliverables from these groups should be
expressions of functional semantic requirements.  It is likely that existing
applications will have encoded particular semantic qualifiers in different
syntactic variations.  It will be the responsibility of the element-specific
working groups to distill the functional requirements from such encodings.
It will be the responsibility of the Data Model Working Group to propose a
common syntactic encoding for a given semantic requirement.

Implicit in the charge of these working groups is the recognition that many
schemes and controlled vocabularies already exist and can be used in the
existing infrastructure (an example of this is the ISO 8601 Date profile
that has been agreed upon for encoding Dublin Core dates). Proposals for
DC-specific semantics should be made only when adequate alternatives do not
exist or are unsuitable for cross disciplinary applications.

Target dates for deliverables will be negotiated with the Dublin Core
Directorate, balancing the need for thorough discussions on the one hand and
the need for timely progression the other.  Scheduling the deliverables will
help to avoid the collision of many working group reports on the dc-general
list at one time. It is hoped that the majority of this work will be
accomplished during QI and QII of 1999.   

Element-specific working groups:
	
1. Creator, Contributor, Publisher [[log in to unmask]]

2. Subject/Description [[log in to unmask]]

3. Title [[log in to unmask]]

4. Date [[log in to unmask]]

5. Format [[log in to unmask]]

6. Type [[log in to unmask]] 

7. Coverage [[log in to unmask]] 

8. Relation/Source [[log in to unmask]]

II. Working groups organized around specific problems or tasks.

These groups are formed around specific problems or sets of problems.  Each
must have a charter approved by the DC Directorate that includes scheduled
deliverables:

1. Data Model [[log in to unmask]]

This group is responsible for identifying the structural and syntactic
requirements for encoding Dublin Core metadata.  

2. Multiple Languages [[log in to unmask]]

This group is responsible for issues relating to the support of multiple
language manifestations of the Dublin Core

3. Bibliographic Citations and Versions [[log in to unmask]]

This group is responsible for identifying standard methods for including
bibliographic citation information about resources in their own metadata,
and related problems of identifying resource version information.

4. 1:1 Principle / Physical Object Description [[log in to unmask]]

This group is responsible for reviewing the One to One Principle and
clarifying its application across a variety of circumstances, including the
description of physical objects.

5. Metadata Schema Interoperability [[log in to unmask]]

This group will examine the functional requirements of three metadata models
(the Dublin Core, INDECS, and the IFLA Functional Requirements for
Bibliographic Resources) and propose means for representing these models so
as to maximize their potential for interoperability.

6. Application Guides [[log in to unmask]]

This group will promote the production of user guides and related
documentation necessary to support the implementation of Dublin Core
Applications. 

III. Special Interest Groups

Special Interest groups (SIGs) are open to any interested participants.
SIGs will have a charter and a mailing list, but not specific deliverables.
SIGs are standing groups that continue as long as there is interest in
maintaining them.  SIGs may generate proposals that may be assigned to
existing working groups or may occasion the formation of a new working
group.

1. Standardization [[log in to unmask]]

This group will address issues relating to the standardization of the Dublin
Core.

2. Implementors [[log in to unmask]]

This group will serve as a forum for discussion of implementation issues.
It is expected that such discussions will, from time to time, lead to work
items that will be assigned to appropriate working groups.


IV. Directions for joining groups and subscribing to group mailing lists:

To join a group, simply subscribe to the appropriate group mailing list.

To subscribe to any of the group mailing lists, send the following command,
(typing the name of the particular list instead of dc-listname and typing
your own personal names instead of firstname(s) and lastname)

     join dc-listname firstname(s) lastname

as the only text in the body of an email addressed to:

     [log in to unmask]

The Mailbase software managing these lists will send you an automatic
message to confirm your email address. You MUST reply to this message within
seven days in order to be added to the list.

If you have any problems, contact [log in to unmask],
replacing 'listname' with the name of the list in question.


V. Volunteering to chair a group

Working group chairs have substantial responsibilities in the management of
the conduct of a working group, including maintaining agendas, lists of open
issues and decisions, and overseeing the production of deliverables.

Anyone interested in taking on these responsibilities for a particular group
should so indicate by sending mail to [log in to unmask]  Working group chairs
will be assigned by the Dublin Core Directorate.







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