On 12 April 1999, the third Metadata Workshop and Concertation
Meeting, organised by the European Commission DGXIII/E2, took
place in Luxembourg.
48 participants from organisations all around Europe attended the
workshop as well as several European Commission services.
This workshop, which is part of an on-going concertation activity
started in 1997, had four objectives:
- to present recent developments around the Dublin Core metadata
element set and look at future directions
- to present RDF and XML and look at the practical consequences
for metadata implementation
- to look at issues related to unique identifiers for electronic
resources
- to discuss metadata issues related to long-term availability of
resources.
The workshop was conducted in 4 sessions, reflecting the objectives
above.
The major conclusions of the workshop can be summarised as
follows:
- For electronic documents and resources produced today, there is
a pressing need for tools and systems to create and maintain
metadata. Further research in this area is necessary.
- The matter is complex, as requirements of different types have
to be met, e.g. electronic commerce and long-term preservation
of resources.
- There is a need for a highest common denominator across domains
and services. It is not yet clear what the specification for
this is, and co-operation between many actors is necessary.
- For projects under the Fourth Framework Programme it is
necessary to pay attention to the developments.
- For projects under the Fifth Framework Programme, the scope
needs to be widened to include other domains, especially museums
and archives where these issues are also important. A wide
participation in the debate would increase the general
applicability and interoperability of the solutions.
- Under the Fifth Framework Programme, clustering of activities in
the area of metadata systems and services is encouraged.
- The following recommendations can be formulated:
- Continuation of concertation is necessary
- Initiatives need to take a focused, practical approach
- The needs of the European citizen need to be taken into
account
- Performance criteria and impact of initiatives need to be
measured
- Issues around cost and quality need to be further addressed
- Support for multilinguality needs to be enhanced
- Further involvement of commercial parties is necessary
For further information, including PowerPoint presentations, see
the Workshop's Web site at:
http://www.echo.lu/libraries/en/metadata/metadata3.html
For more information concerning the first two workshops, see:
http://www2.echo.lu/libraries/en/metadata.html
http://www2.echo.lu/libraries/en/metadata2.html
For more information on the Libraries sector of the Telematics
Application Programme, see Web site at:
http://www2.echo.lu/libraries/en/libraries.html
__________________________________________________________________
Makx Dekkers e-mail: [log in to unmask]
PricewaterhouseCoopers GSM: +352 021 29 72 29
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